A'i 



CHARLES ELWOOD. 



CHARLES ELWOOD 



OR 



THE INFIDEL CONVERTED. 



By 0. A. V BROWNSON. 



BOSTON: 
CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. 

MD CCCXL. 






- 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840. 
by O. A. Brownson, in the Clerk's Office of the District 
Court, of the District of Massachusetts. 



BO STON: 

FREEMAN AND BOLLES, PRINTERS, 

WASHINGTON STREET. 



/ 




PREFACE. 



I have not much to say by way of preface 
to this little volume. It explains itself, and 
contains in itself the grounds of its own jus- 
tification or condemnation. 

I do not send it forth as a work of art, and 
I have not studied to conform to the estab- 
lished laws of the species of composition to 
which it may seem to belong. It has the air 
of being a work of fiction ; but it has been 
written in an earnest spirit for a serious pur- 
pose. 

The form in which I have chosen to send 
out the ideas and discussions embodied in this 
work, has been adopted to please myself, and 
because it was the most convenient form I 
could adopt for presenting my ideas clearly 
and in a moderate space. A regular treatise 



VI PREFACE. 

on the subject here discussed, I have not had 
the patience, if the ability, to prepare, and 
nobody would read it if I had. 

It may be objected that I have introduced 
too much fiction for a serious work, and too 
little, if I intended a regular-built novel. All 
I have to say is the public must take the work 
as they find it. In order to have introduced 
a greater variety of characters and events, I 
wanted a fertility of imagination to which I 
lay no claim, and a different purpose in wri- 
ting from the one I really had. I have in- 
troduced as much variety of character and 
action, as my imagination furnished, or my 
judgment approved. If novel readers are not 
satisfied with this explanation, why, they 
must apply to somebody else, I can give 
them no satisfaction. 

The characters introduced are of course 
fictitious, yet I may say that I have myself 
had an intellectual experience similar to that 
which Mr. Elwood records, and what he has 
said of himself would perhaps apply in some 
degree to me. I am willing the public should 
take the book as an account which I have 



PREFACE. Vll 

thought proper to give of my own former un- 
belief and present belief. So far as it can be 
of any use, I am willing that what is here 
recorded should have the authority of my 
own experience. 

Those who are acquainted with the philo- 
sophical writers of the modern eclectic school 
of philosophy in France, will perceive that Mr. 
Morton has anticipated many of their results, 
and perhaps given them an original applica- 
tion. He seems to be somewhat of a kindred 
spirit with M. Victor Cousin, though perhaps 
more of a theologian, and therefore more dis- 
posed to consider philosophy in its connexion 
with religion. 

With these remarks I dismiss this little book 
to its fate. I have taken much pleasure in its 
composition ; I have embodied in it the results 
of years of inquiry and reflection; and I have 
thought it not ill-adapted to the present state 
of the public mind in this community. It 
deals with the weightiest problems of philoso- 
phy and theology, and perhaps some minds 
may find it not altogether worthless. 

Boston, February 15, 1840. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 1 

CHAPTER I. 
A Visiter 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Divine Revelation 12 

CHAPTER III. 
Miracles 20 

CHAPTER IV. 
An Interview « 28 

CHAPTER V. 
The Inquiry Meeting 34 

CHAPTER VI. 
Struggles 41 

CHAPTER VII. 
Authority 47 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Argument from Nature .....*,.** 53 

b 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Sacrifice 62 

CHAPTER X. 
The Dismissal » 71 

CHAPTER XL 
Priestcraft , 83 

CHAPTER XII. 
Immortality 88 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Reformer 94 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Christian 100 

CHAPTER XV. 
Convalescence 121 

CHAPTER XVI. 
A Paradox 127 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Rationalism 136 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
The Preacher 146 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Some Progress 167 

CHAPTER XX. 
God I 178 

CHAPTER XXL 
The Demonstration 185 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER XXIL 
Creation 198 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Results 205 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

SuPERNATURALISM 212 

CHAPTER XXV. 
The Bible 228 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
The Church 242 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
Conclusion 257 



INTRODUCTION. 



You ask me, my dear K , to give you the 

history of my life. I am flattered by the re- 
quest which your often-tried friendship for me has 
prompted, but I can bring myself to comply with 
it only in part. Perhaps the history of my life 
would not be altogether barren of interest, but I 
have resolved that it shall never be written. I have 
lived in the world from my childhood ; I have act- 
ed even a conspicuous part with the men of my 
generation, in its busy scenes ; my name has been 
known far and wide ; and yet are there none liv- 
ing who can bring together the scattered fragments 
of my story and furnish any tolerable account of 
my life. They who knew me in childhood are not 
they who have known me in the prime of manhood 
or in old age ; and they who have known me at 
one period of my life, or under one relation, have 
had and can have no access to those who have 
known me at another period or under another rela- 
tion. 

But why ask for the story of my outward life ? 
It can tell you little of myself, and furnish you no 
sure index to my real character. The man lies 
*1 



Z INTRODUCTION. 

beneath his deeds, far beneath the outward events 
of his life. Would you become acquainted with 
the man you must read the history of his soul — 
make yourself familiar with his spiritual experi- 
ence, his inward struggles, defeats, victories, 

N doubts, convictions, aims, ideals. These constitute 
the man, and you become acquainted with him 
only in proportion as you become acquainted with 
them. Moreover, arrived as I am at the last stage 
in my earthly pilgrimage, and wasting away under 

. a disease which, though gentle in its operations, 
must ere long lay me asleep with my fathers, my 
past deeds shrink into insignificance, as does the 
world to which they belonged. I find now solace 
and support only in turning in upon myself, in re- 
tracing my inward experience, and ascertaining 
what 1 have garnered up in my soul, that I may be 
able to carry with me whither I am going. But 
even this experience has little value except for my- 
self. It can stand others in no stead, or if it can, 
they may find all that is essential in it, by recur- 
ring to what has passed in themselves. 

/ After all, my dear K , what are individuals 

that their history should be written ? Biography 
is the fruit of vanity, or of a false philosophy. 
What is purely individual, is of no value ; it must 
needs pass away with the individual, and leave no 
trace; what there is, in an individual, which be- 
longs to the race^ necessarily inscribes itself on his 
age, its institutions, laws, morals, or manners. The 



INTRODUCTION, 



memory of the good man lives in the virtue which 
went forth from him, — that of the great man in 
the results Humanity obtains from the victories he 
has helped her achieve. The man's biography, 
if he have manifested aught of the manly nature, 
has become an integral part of the life of human- 
ity, and therefore needs not to be written in a book 
and laid up in the scholar's library. The book 
preserves nothing ; for nothing ever dies that ought 
to live ; nothing is ever forgotten that should be 
remembered ; and all is known of every man that 
is worth knowing. 

You see then, my dear K , why I cannot com- 
ply with your request. If I have done aught for 
my race it will not be forgotten ; if my fellow men 
are the wiser or the better for my having lived, I 
am immortal. 

We should study to be men, heroes, and think 
not "whether our names shall or shall not be re- 
membered. Nevertheless, I understand the feel- 
ing which prompts us to inquire how it has been 
with those in this world whom we have loved, or 
whose memories we would cherish. I know the 
love which you feel for me, and which gives me 
an importance in your eyes which I have not in my 
own, makes you desirous of knowing what befell 
me during that long period of my life which pass- 
ed away before we met ; I know every incident in 
my eventful life, every the minutest fact in my 
experience, would be precious to you for my sake, 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

that you would prize it and preserve it ; and to 
gratify you, and to show how deeply I value the 
love which has come to shed a glory around the 
winter of my life, I would willingly recall and 
relate all that I have been, have done, or have 
suffered. But I have not now the strength to do it. 
The time allotted me here is too limited ; and my 
last moments should rather be employed in making 
what preparation I can for the new world into 
which I am so soon to enter. I have however by 
me a short account of a period of my life, least 
known to the public, which I drew up some years 
ago at the solicitation of one, now, alas, no more ! 
It will tell you not much of my exterior relations, 
nor of the scenes in which I have taken an active 
part ; but it may tell you somewhat of my inward 
conflicts, and perhaps disclose to you some of the 
causes which have made me what I am. When I 
drew it up, I had the folly to think that it might 
serve as a guide to those who should find them- 
selves, as I did myself, at an early age, lost in that 
wilderness of Doubt, where a man cannot live, and 
from which there seems to be no issue ; but I have 
lived long enough to learn that the experience 
which profits, is our own and not another's. I have 
looked it over and added a few notes which were 
needed to make some parts of it intelligible ; I 
have revised some portions ; but I have not been 
able to make it harmonize with the present temper 
of my mind. We are rarely in old age satisfied 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

with the performances of our youth. The imper- 
fections I see in it, however, render it but a more 
faithful picture of my mind and character at the 
period to which it relates. I place it in your hands, 
and you may do with it as you please. As com- 
ing from me, and as concerning me, I doubt not 
that you will prize it. You will find nothing in it 
to make you love me less ; and that is all I ask. 
Of the many whose hearts I have felt were my 
own, you alone remain. I will not say that any 
have been false, but all have left me, perhaps 
through my own fault. I have none who can talk 
with me over life's early trials, temptations, and 
struggles. With you I chanced to meet, only long 
after I had persuaded myself that friendship and 
love were not for such as I. You have taught me 
what all who reach old age know but too well, 
however otherwise youth may fear, that the heart 
never grows old, that the affections are always 
young. I cannot consent that you should leave me 
as others have left me. I would go down to the 
grave feeling that one warm heart loved me still, 
and had no cause to regret the wealth of affection 
it had lavished upon me. 

C. E. 



CHARLES ELWOOD. 



CHAPTER I. 



A VISITER. 



I was surprised at my breakfast by a visit from 
Mr. Smith, the young clergyman I had heard 
preach the preceding evening. This was hardly 
in the ordinary course of things. I was generally 
regarded in the village as an infidel ; and to be an 
infidel — that is, an open, avowed infidel — is to 
exclude one's self from the common courtesies of 
civilized life, and almost from the pale of human- 
ity. Pious people beheld me with a most righteous 
horror, and not unfrequently, I have good reason 
to believe, made use of my name to restore quiet 
or preserve submission in the nursery. Of course 
I was generally avoided by the elect, probably lest 
I should cause them to become castaways. 

The wisdom or the policy, to say nothing of the 



8 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

justice, of this manner of treating the infidel, is 
somewhat questionable, and in my own case was 
decidedly bad. I had a deep yearning for com- 
munion with my kind, and was ever ready to 
sympathize with them in their joy or their sorrow. 
I was unconscious of guilt ; I had a strong craving 
to know the truth, and I felt that I had done my 
best to ascertain it, and that if I was in error I was 
not in fault. The conduct of religious people, 
therefore, struck me as unjust, and could not fail to 
prejudice me against them, and through them 
against religion itself. Had they treated me as a 
man, and shown me that respect for my honest 
convictions which I was willing to show them for 
theirs, I have no doubt that I should have been sav- 
ed from dogmatic infidelity. But they were not 
wise enough — very likely not christian enough — 
for this. 

I have since thought, however, that these reli- 
gious people did respect me to a certain extent. 
We always consciously or unconsciously do hom- 
age to the man of true moral independence, who 
unflinchingly adheres to what he believes to be the 
truth. No man who is true to his own convictions, 
who follows faithfully his own conscience, and pro- 
claims calmly but fearlessly unpopular doctrines, 
regardless of personal consequences/ but does in 
reality gain the respect of the community in which 
he lives, however great may be its repugnance to 
the views he sets forth. Every body despises the 



A VISITER. 9 

time-server, the moral coward, who wants the man- 
liness to speak out his honest convictions, and who 
says " Good Lord," and " Good Devil," doubtful 
into the hands of which he may ultimately fall. 
But my religious friends had their religious char- 
acter to maintain with one another, and no one 
among them had the moral courage to make the first 
advances. Every one felt that if he were intimate 
with me, all his brethren might suspect his orthodoxy, 
and perhaps accuse him of encouraging infidelity. 
It is possible, also, that some did honestly fear 
that if they treated me as a man and a brother, they 
would be giving countenance to my heresies and 
encouraging me in errors which would prove not 
only dangerous to society, but fatal to my own 
soul. They felt it to be their duty to make me 
dissatisfied with my infidelity, and to do what they 
could to deprive me of all personal influence. This 
they supposed could be done most effectually by 
bringing the whole force of public opinion to bear 
against me. But in this, their zeal for religion out- 
ran their knowledge of human nature. Public 
opinion is the poorest argument in the world to 
convince a man of his errors. Every man, if there 
be any thing of the man about him, adheres but 
the firmer to his opinions the more unpopular thdy 
render him. We value those opinions the most 
for which we pay the dearest, and hold on as with 
a death-grasp to the faith, or the want of faith, for 
which we have been made outcasts from society. 



10 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

But this is a truth religious people have been slow 
to learn, and learn it perfectly they cannot with- 
out just observation and profound reflection — two 
things which they eschew almost as devoutly as 
they do infidelity itself. 

It may be easily iriferred, from what I have said, 
that I was left pretty much alone, that my inter- 
course with my fellow men, was exceedingly re- 
stricted. My friends were few in number, and 
rarely such as I would have chosen. They who 
had reputation to gain or to lose, took good care 
not to be thought acquaintances of mine. And the 
friendship of those who called themselves my 
friends, grew cool in nearly the same proportion 
in which the warmth of the revival increased. 
One and only one, I had trusted, might remain 
firm, but him I had left on the anxious seats, and 
could therefore hardly hope to meet him again as 
a friend. Under these circumstances, a visit early 
in the morning from a clergyman, and such a cler- 
gyman as I supposed Mr. Smith to be, was an 
event in my life as unlocked for as it was appa- 
rently inexplicable. 

But Mr. Smith, to do him justice, was in the 
main an honest, well-meaning man. Early drawn 
to the contemplation of religious subjects, and im- 
pressed with the importance of saving his soul, he 
had failed to take enlarged views of men and 
things, or to acquire much of that kind of know- 
ledge which expands the affections and liberalizes 



A VISITER. 11 

the mind. Educated too by charity, as a poor and 
pious youth, gratitude to the sect which had taken 
him up, and to which he had pledged his faith be- 
fore he had begun his inquiries after the truth, had 
come to quicken his zeal and narrow his sympa- 
thies. But he was sincere, and really desirous of 
saving souls. He was fresh from the theological 
school, full of the ardor of undamped youth, and 
burning with all the zeal to make proselytes that 
could be inspired by a creed which denied the pos- 
sibility of salvation to any who doubted it. He 
had heard of me as an atheist, his attention had 
been directed to me at his evening meeting, and 
he had now just stepped in to convert me to Chris- 
tianity. Having never measured himself with an 
intelligent unbeliever, he counted on an easy and 
speedy victory. 



CHAPTER II. 



DIVINE REVELATION. 



"I have called on you, Mr. Elwood," said Mr. 
Smith, after a few common-place remarks, " with 
a message from God." 

u Indeed ! " said I : " And when, sir, did you 
receive it ? " 

c , ; Last night. When you left the meeting with- 
out taking your place on the anxious seats, God told 
me to come and deliver you a message." 

" Are you certain it was God ? " 

" I am." 

" And how will you make me certain ? " 

" Do you think I would tell you a falsehood?" 

" Perhaps not, intentionally ; but what evidence 
have I that you are not yourself deceived ? " 

" I feel certain, and do I not know what I feel ? " 

" Doubtless, what you feel ; but how do you 
know that your feeling is worthy of trust ? " 

" Could not God give me, when he spoke to me, 
sufficient evidence that it was really He who spoke 
to me ? " 

" Of that you are probably the best judge. But 



DIVINE REVELATION. 13 

admit that he could give it, and has actually given 
it ; still you alone have it, not I. If then you come 
to me with the authority of God to vouch for the 
trustworthiness of your feeling, you must be aware 
that I have not that authority ; I have only your 
word — the word of a man, who for aught I know, 
is as fallible as myself. You come to me as an 
ambassador from God ; produce your credentials, 
and I will listen to your despatches." 

" My credentials are the Bible." 

" But, pray, sir, how can a book written many 
ages ago, by nobody knows whom, be a proof to 
me that God told you last night to come and de- 
liver me a message this morning ? " 

" I bring you just such a message as the Bible 
dictates." 

" And what then ? " 

" The Bible is the Word of God." 

" That is easily said, but I fancy not quite so 
easily proved. The Bible is in the same category 
with your feeling of certainty, of which you have 
spoken. Certain men, it is said, in old times, had 
certain dreams, visions, inward impressions, which 
they called, or somebody in their name, the Word 
of God. That they had the dreams, visions, in- 
ward impressions, is possible, but how could they 
fenow that they came from God ? " 

" Their impressions bore the mark of God's seal. 
The men who received them were honest men, 
holy men, who could have no motive to deceive 



14 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

others, and who could not be deceived them- 
selves." 

" And how know you all that ? " 

"I am sure of it." 

" I am glad you are. But I should hardly dare 
make so broad an assertion concerning individuals 
with whom I am intimately acquainted, much less 
of individuals of whom I know nothing at all, not 
even the time when they lived, the nation to which 
they belonged, the language in which they wrote, 
nor even the names which they bore. How know 
I that the Bible-writers were honest men ? What 
do 1, or can I know of their motives ? Before you 
insist on my relying upon a man's testimony, it 
would seem no more than fair that you should 
make me acquainted with him ; that you should 
tell me his name, his place of residence, the nation 
to which he belongs ; and in case of an ancient 
writer, that you should tell me when he wrote, 
in what language; — -in a word, you should give 
me his whole character, and the entire history 
of his life. This I suspect you are not able to do, 
in the instance of a single one of your Bible-wri- 
ters." 

" You misstate the case. The historical evidence 
is complete ; at least, it is much stronger in proof 
of the genuineness and authenticity of the several 
books of the Bible than it is of any other ancient 
writing whatever." 

"lam speaking, sir, of the character and mo- 



DIVINE REVELATION. 15 

tives of the Bible-writers, of which, so far as I 
have been able to ascertain, we know next to no- 
thing at all. But admit that we know as much of 
these writers as we do of any other ancient writers, 
how does that help the matter ? Because I know 
nothing of one class of writers, does it follow that 
I have no need of knowing anything of another 
class ? Besides, the cases are not parallel. The 
facts and doctrines of the Bible are to be taken 
on the personal authority of its writers. If I can- 
not prove these writers worthy of implicit confi- 
dence, I can offer no good reason for believing the 
facts they relate, or the doctrines they teach. But 
it is different with what are called profane writers. 
We have their books, and these speak for them- 
selves. Their worth would be but slightly im- 
paired were their authors wholly unknown. The 
works ascribed to Homer, to Plato, Cicero, Virgil 
and Horace, would be precisely what they are and 
have exactly the same authority they now have, 
had they been written by any other individuals 
than those to whom they are attributed. This is 
because the truth or falsity of their subject-matter 
does in nowise depend on the personal authority 
of their authors. But with the Bible it is not so. 
You do not allow me to take the Bible as I do one 
of the works of Homer or Cicero, and judge for 
myself of its contents. You do not allow me the 
liberty to be my own judge of what is true or false 
in the Bible ; but you require me to take the whole 



16 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

of it as true, and not only as true but as the .meas- 
ure and test of truth ; and this, too, not because, I 
have by the exercise of my own reason found it 
to be true, but on the bare word of its authors. 
This makes an essential difference, and requires 
you to furnish me with as much stronger proof in 
the case of the Bible-writers than is necessary in 
the case of profane writers, as the implicit faith 
you demand in the statements of the first surpasses 
the assent which I yield to the statements of the 
lasjt. But waiving this, and much more to the 
same purpose, admitting that you can come to 
some tolerable conclusions concerning the charac- 
ters and motives of the alleged authors of the 
Bible, how will you ascertain the purity and genu- 
ineness of the writings which have come down to 
us in their name ? " 

" That has been done over and over again, by 
some of the ablest, the most learned, and pious 
men that ever lived." 

" So I have heard it said, but so have I not seen 
it proved. I have looked over most of your cele- 
brated apologies for the Bible and Christianity, but 
with little other emotion than astonishment at the 
much which is asserted, and the little which is 
proved. All these celebrated apologies seem to 
me to proceed on the supposition that the Bible 
was written in an enlightened age, and published 
and extensively, I may almost say, universally 
circulated and read in a nation of critics, all of 



DIVINE. REVELATION. 17 

whom were interested in detecting its errors, and 
would most certainly have detected and exposed 
them had there been any. Now, sir, I need not 
tell you, a theologian, that such is not the fact. 
They were produced in a semi-barbarous age, or 
among a half-civilized people. They were never 
published, as we understand the term. They were 
never open to criticism, as books are now-a-days ; 
partly because at first they were considered too 
insignificant to be refuted, but mainly because they 
were, by the people who submitted to them, re- 
garded as sacred books. They were accounted 
sacred books, not because their superior worth was 
seen and felt, but because they were the produc- 
tions of the sacerdocy, or such books as the Jewish 
or Christian priesthood approved, and authorized to 
be read. All books written or approved by the 
sacerdotal caste, were always accounted sacred, 
holy, in opposition to profane books, or books writ- 
ten or kept not in the fane or temple. Being sa- 
cred books it was never lawful to criticise them, 
and they never were criticised when the priesthood 
had power to prevent it. And you, sir, are well 
aware, that whenever the priesthood has attained 
to power it has always taken good care to destroy 
the criticisms which it had not been able to pre- 
vent. Moreover, the books have always been in 
the keeping of the priesthood, and of a priesthood 
too which obtained its living, rank, and considera- 
tion from expounding them to a laity which had 
2 



18 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

them not, and could not have read them, if it had 
had them. I own, sir, that I have a distrust of all 
books which have come to us through the hands of 
the priesthood, of whom it is no lack of charity to 
say, that in no age or country have they proved 
themselves too virtuous to interpolate, alter, or 
fabricate any work when required by the inter- 
ests of their order." 

" That is a statement you cannot sustain. The 
very fact that the sacred books have always been 
in the keeping of the Jewish priesthood and the 
Christian clergy, is a sure guaranty of their genu- 
ineness and purity." 

" Your assertion, it strikes me, betrays rather a 
superficial acquaintance with priesthoods in gen* 
eral, and the Jewish and Christian priesthoods in 
particular ; or else that you have studied them with 
the partialities of a friend who deems it the great- 
est merit to be blind to a friend's faults. But I am 
not disposed to insist on this. I will merely add 
that once open the door to the admission of such 
testimony as you seem to judge unexceptionable, 
once lay it down as a principle of evidence that a 
man's word, if he have but a tolerable character 
for honesty and truth, is sufficient proof of any 
statement he/may make, whatever be its subject- 
matter, and I see not what end yon will have to 
impostors and impositions. Any one who can 
conceal a nefarious design beneath the cloak of 
external sanctity, may~proclaim himself divinely 



DIVINE REVELATION. 19 

inspired, command whatever he pleases,, and de- 
nounce you in the name of God, if you refuse 
him obedience. You must own him as a prophet 
of the Lord, and accept his prophecies, be they 
what they may. The past and the present have a 
thousand voices to condemn in advance the prin- 
ciple of evidence you would establish. I would 
not treat you, sir, with disrespect, but knowing as I 
do from past history and from my own experience, 
how easy it is for a man to be deceived, I must 
believe that it is more likely that your zeal has 
betrayed you, than it is that God has given you a 
special message to me." 



CHAPTER III. 



MIRACLES. 



"But you forget," replied Mr. Smith, after a 
short pause, " that the communications received by 
the sacred writers bore the impress of God's seal. 
God gave them all needed assurance that it was he 
himself who spoke to them. If then they were 
honest men, we ought to believe them. That they 
were honest men, worthy of all credit as speaking 
by Divine authority, I infer from the fact that 
they could work miracles." 

" All that is easily said. Whether God keeps a 
seal or not is more than I know ; but supposing he 
does, are mortals well enough acquainted with it 
to recognise it the moment it is presented ? How 
do they know its impress ? Has God lodged with 
them a fac-simile of it ? " 

" God told them that it was his seal.'" 

" But how did they know it was God who said 
so ? Had they had any previous acquaintance 
with him ? Who introduced him to them, assured 
them it was verily the Almighty ? But this leads 
us back to where we were a moment ago. I sup- 



MIRACLES. 21 

pose you hold a supernatural revelation from God 
to be necessary ? " 

" Certainly." 

" And without a supernatural revelation we can 
know nothing of God ? " 

" Nothing." 

" Deprive us of the Bible and we should be in 
total ignorance of God ? " 

" Assuredly." 

" It is necessary to prove that the revelation said 
to be from God is actually from him ? " 

" Undoubtedly." 

" The revelation is proved to be from God by 
the miracles performed by the men who professed 
to speak by Divine authority ? " 

" Yes." 

" Miracles prove this, because they are perform- 
ed by the power of God, and because God will not 
confer the power of working miracles on wicked 
men or men who will tell lies ? " 

" So I believe." 

" It requires some knowledge of God to be able 
to say of any given act that it is performed by God. 
We say of what you term a miracle, that it is 
wrought by the Almighty, because we seem to our- 
selves to detect his presence in it. Now/ if we 
were totally unacquainted with his presence, should 
we be able to detect it? It therefore requires 
some knowledge of God to be able to assert that 
what is termed a miracle is actually effected by 



22 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

Divine power. Also it requires some knowledge 
of God to be able to affirm that he will give the 
power of working miracles to good men only. You 
start at the idea that he would give this power to 
wicked men, because to do so would be inconsistr 
ent with the character you believe him to possess. 
In saying that he will not do it, you assume to be 
acquainted with his character ; and from your as- 
sumed acquaintance with his character, you infer 
what he will or will not do. In both of these in- 
stances, no inconsiderable knowledge of God is 
presupposed. Whence do we obtain this know- 
ledge ? " 

"Every body knows enough of God to know 
when a miracle is performed that it is God who 
s performs it, and to know that God will not give the 
power of working miracles to bad men." 

"Perhaps so. You at least may know enough 
to know this. But suppose you were deprived of 
all the light of revelation, would you know enough 
of God to know this ? Did I not understand you 
to say that were it not for revelation we should be 
totally ignorant of God ? " 

" I said so, and say so still." 

" I presume, sir, that there is a point here which 
has in part escaped your attention. I have observ- 
ed that you religious people, in defending miracles, 
assume to be in possession of all the knowledge of 
God communicated by the supernatural revelation 
miracles are brought forward to authenticate. You 



MIRACLES. 23 

assume the truth of the revelation, and by that 
verify your miracles ; and then adduce your mira- 
cles to authenticate the revelation. But I need not 
say to you that before you have authenticated your 
revelation you have no right to use it ; and before 
you can authenticate it, on your own showing, you 
must verify your miracles — a thing you cannot do 
without that knowledge of God which you say is 
to be obtained from the revelation only." 

" I do no such thing." 

^ Not intentionally, consciously, I admit. You 
have not a doubt of the truth of revelation. Your 
whole intellectual being is penetrated in all direc- 
tions with its teachings, and you never make in 
your own mind an abstraction of what you have 
received from the Bible, and thus ascertain what 
would be your precise condition were you left to 
the light of nature. You fall therefore uncon- 
sciously into the practice of reasoning in support of 
your faith from premises which that faith itself sup- 
plies, and which would be of no validity if that faith- 
were proved to be false ; and are of no validity 
when reasoning with one who questions it. But, 
sir, this whole matter of miracles may be cut short. 
What is a miracle ? You must know as much of 
God and the universe to be able to define a mira- 
cle, as a miracle on any supposition can teach you. 
Therefore miracles are at best useless. Then the 
evidence of the extraordinary feats you term mir- 
acles is not altogether satisfactory. All ancient 



24 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

history, profane as well as sacred, is full of mar- 
vellous stories which no sound mind can for one 
moment entertain. They serve to discredit history. 
The ancient historian who should fill his history 
with marvels would by no means be held in so 
high respect even by yourself as one who con- 
fined his faith to the simple, the ordinary, the nat- 
ural. His faith in marvels, omens, oracles, prodi- 
gies, you would regard as an impeachment of his 
judgment. Why not do the same in regard to the 
Bible historians ? You allege miracles as a proof 
of revelation, when in fact nothing about your rev- 
elation, or in it, is more in need of proof than your 
miracles themselves. Then again, miracles can 
prove nothing but our ignorance. No event that 
can be traced to a known cause is ever termed a 
miracle. ^A miracle is merely an event w 7 hich can 
be traced to no known law of nature. To say an 
event is miraculous, is merely saying that it is an 
anomaly in our experience, and not provided for in 
our systems of science. The miraculous events 
recorded in the Bible may have occurred, for aught 
I know, but they are of no value as evidences of 
Christianity. " 

" Why not?" 

" I supposed I had already shown why not. You 
cannot know enough of God and .the universe to 
know, in the first place, that what you term mira- 
cles are actually wrought by God. For aught you 
know to the contrary there may be thousands of 



MIRACLES. 25 

beings superior to man capable of performing them. 
And in the second place, you can never infer from 
the fact that a man opens the eyes of the blind, or 
restores a dead body to life, that he cannot tell a 
lie. The fact that the miracle is performed does 
not necessarily involve the truth of the doctrine 
taught, nor the veracity of the miracle-worker. So 
far as you or I know a man may perform what is 
termed a miracle and yet be a teacher of false doc- 
trines." 

" But if you should see a man raise a dead body 
to life, in attestation of his Divine commission, 
would you not believe him ? " 

"If your history be correct, there were men 
who actually saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the^ 
dead, and yet neither recognised his claims as the 
Son of God nor as a teacher of truth, but went 
away and took counsel how they might put him to 
death. Before the raising of a man from the dead 
could be a sufficient warrant for me to receive any 
doctrine, I must know positively that no being not 
commissioned by Go$, can raise a dead body to 
life, or that no being capable of raising a dead 
body to life, can possibly tell a falsehood. Now 
this knowledge I have not, and cannot have." 

Mr. Smith made no reply. He remarked that 
he had.overstaid- his time, that an imperious en- 
gagement required him to leave me; but he. would 
call upon me again, and continue the discussion — 
a promise, by-the-by, which he forgot to keep, or 



26 



CHARLES ELWOOD. 



which circumstances prevented him from fulfill- 
ing. 

Many years have elapsed since this conversation 
took place. I have reviewed it often in various 
and diverse moods of mind, but I have not been 
able to detect any fallacy in my reasoning. It is 
true that reasoning, if admitted, goes to show that 
a revelation from God to man is impossible. If 
the premises from which both Mr. Smith and I 
started be correct, all supernatural revelation must 
be given up. They who deny to man all inherent 
capacity to know God, all immediate perception of 
spiritual truth, place man out of the condition of 
ever knoiving any thing of God. Man can know 
only what he has a capacity to know. God may 
speak to him, and utter truths which he could not 
of himself have found out, but unless there be in 
him something which recognises the voice of God, 
and bears witness for God, it is all in vain. If 
there be not this something in man, then can man 
receive no revelation from God. There must be 
a God within to recognise and vouch for the God 
who speaks to us from without. 

Now this inherent capacity to recognise God, 
this power to detect his presence wherever he is, 
and of course everywhere, I did not admit, and 
not admitting this my conclusions followed legiti- 
mately from my premises. 

Mr. Smith admitted it no more than I did, and 



MIRACLES. 27 

therefore could not refute me. Denying this ca- 
pacity, he admitted nothing by which a superna- 
tural revelation could be authenticated, for it re- 
quired this capacity to detect the presence of God 
in the miracles, not less than to detect it in the 
revelation itself. Not having this capacity, man 
could have no standard by which to try the reve- 
lation alleged to be from God. This was what I 
labored to make Mr. Smith comprehend ; I de- 
manded of him this standard, the criterion of spir- 
itual truth, the fac-simile of God's seal with which 
to compare the impress on the despatches sent us 
in his name ; but he could not answer my demand. 
Many able apologists of Christianity fail to per- 
ceive the point they must establish in the very 
outset of this controversy with unbelievers. This 
point is, that man is endowed with an intelligence 
that knows God immediately, by intuition. They 
who deny this, may be religious, but only at the 
expense of their logic. We can rationally and 
scientifically sustain religion only by recognising 
the mystic element of human nature, an element, 
which though in man, is yet in relation with God, 
and serves as the mediator between God and man. 
If we cannot establish the reality of this element, 
which is sometimes termed the Divine in man, and 
which though in nature is supernatural, it is in 
vain to seek for any scientific basis for theology, 
and unbelief in God is the only conclusion to which 
we can legitimately come. 



CHAPTER IV. 



AN INTERVIEW. 



After Mr. Smith had taken his leave, I called on 
my friend George Wyman, whom I had left the 
preceding evening on the anxious seats. He was 
not at home, but instead of him I found his sister 
Elizabeth. Of this sister, I must say something, 
and yet I would not ; her name calls up much I 
would forget, as well as much I would remember ; 
but little that I am willing to relate. The heart 
has secrets which it is sacrilege to reveal. Eliz- 
abeth and I had been acquainted for some time, 
and we had formed a strong mutual attachment ; we 
had opened the state of our hearts to each other, 
and were now waiting for a few weeks to pass 
away, to be declared in due form " husband and 
wife." 

" O, Charles, I am so glad to see you," exclaim- 
ed she, rising to meet me, as I entered the room. 
" O there is a God ! He has spoken peace to my 
soul, and I wanted to see you that we might sing 
his praise together." 



AN INTERVIEW. 29 

" O, there is a God," spoken by the sweet lips 
of eighteen, by her we love and hope in a few days 
to call our own by the most intimate and sacred of 
ties, — it goes well nigh to melt even the atheist. 
It comes to us as a voice from another world, and 
wins the heart though it fail to convince the under- 
standing. It is no easy thing to be an atheist 
when one loves, is in presence of the one he loves, 
and hears her, in the simple, confiding tones of the 
child, exclaim, "O, there is a God." For a mo- 
ment I gazed on the beautiful being before me, as 
upon one inspired. Could I see her, hear her, love 
her with all my heart, and not believe in the Di- 
vinity ? She seemed sent to me from a fairer 
world, to bear witness to the reality of brighter 
beings than the dull inhabitants of earth. 

I ought to explain the occasion of this exclama- 
tion on the part of Elizabeth, and I have done it, 
when I have said that she had been recently con- 
verted, and this was our first meeting since. Her 
manner affected me not a little, and, strange as it 
may seem, went much farther than all Mr. Smith's 
logic towards making me a Christian. But recov- 
ering myself, and making an effort to reply calmly, 
I replied, as is not uncommon in such cases, even 
coldly. 

" I perceive, Elizabeth, that you have become 
a subject of the Revival," said I. " Women are 
easily affected in revival seasons. They are crea- 
tures of sentiment rather than of reason, and are 



30 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

therefore much addicted to piety. That may all 
be well enough. God, you say, has spoken peace 
to your soul. Very well. He has not spoken to 
me." 

" Charles, Charles, have you no feeling ? The 
whole creation is radiant with God's glory : all 
creatures, even beasts, birds and insects, join in a 
hymn of praise to his mercy ; and are you silent, 
you, whom I have heard so often and so eloquently 
plead for the oppressed, and so warmly vindicate 
the rights and dignity of man ? Have you 
no word for God ; the exhaustless source of all 
Goodness, Life and Love ? Is your heart cold and 
dead ? " 

" No, Elizabeth, no. My heart is not dead. I 
want not sensibility, but I want faith. I see all 
things with the eyes of the unbeliever. I hear not 
the hymn which so enraptures you. All nature 
is silent to me. I cannot sympathize with your 
present feelings. I am an unbeliever, but I do not 
ask you to be one. Indulge your piety, but think 
not unkindly of me if I cannot share it."" 

" Charles, you might be a believer if you would." 

" No, I could not. I am not an unbeliever from 
choice, but necessity." 

" I doubt it. You are too proud to be a Chris- 
tian. You are ashamed of the humility of the 
cross. You would be a philosopher, and follow 
your own reason. You will not submit to God." 

" Nay, Elizabeth, you wrong me, wrong me 



AN INTERVIEW. 31 

grievously. I am not ashamed of the humility of 
the cross. I have tried hard to be a Christian.'" 

" You have ? " 

" Ay, by day and by night. I have sought God 
with my whole heart, with tears, entreaties, fast- 
ings, watchings, but it has availed me nothing ; I 
am an atheist." 

" O, say not so." 

" Why should I deceive myself or others ? If 
I know the state of my own mind, I do not believe 
in the existence of God. But do not fancy that I 
have become what I am without a struggle. I am 
not ignorant of what men call religion. It has 
been the study of my life. My first lesson was 
the cateqhism, and my earliest delight was in 
reading religious books, conversing with religious 
people, and thinking of God and heaven. I was 
not yet thirteen when I was affected as you have 
been, — had deep and pungent conviction for sin, — 
heard, as I fancied, the Son of God declare my 
sins forgiven, and felt all the ecstatic joy you now 
feel." 

" And yet have become an unbeliever ! " 

"'T is true. But I have not labored to make 

others unbelievers. Unbelief has few attractions. 

j It adds no glory to the universe, no warmth to the 

heart, no freshness to life. It is a sad creed ; the 

wise endure it, but none love it." A > 

" Why then cling to it ? Why live without God 
in the world ? Why not believe, and be filled with 
joy and peace unspeakable ? " 



32 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" Because it depends not on us what we shall 
believe or disbelieve ; because our belief or dis- 
belief alters not the fact. Truth and falsehood 
depend not on us. We have not made the world. 
We must take it as we find it. No wise man values 
it very highly. It is full of cares and vexations, 
crosses and disappointments, trials and sorrows. 
The only course which wisdom leaves us is to 
make the most of the few fair days allotted us, to 
recline on the few sunny spots which may lie in 
life's pathway, endure without a murmur the evils 
we cannot cure, and welcome the end of our jour- 
ney when we may lie down in the grave, ' Where 
the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are 
at rest.' " 

" So young, and yet so gloomy ! So soon is 
the light of hope extinguished, your affections 
blighted, and your soul darkened ! O, Charles, 
see the fruits of your boasted philosophy. Let me 
pray you to rekindle the light of hope at religion's 
torch, and your heart shall resume its early fresh- 
ness. Your path shall be bright again, and you 
may \, ilk through life praising God, and loving all 
his works ; and when our journey is ended we will 
not lie down in the cold grave, but uprise in a 
fairer and better world, where we shall re-youth 
ourselves, and enter into joys which ; eye hath not 
seen, ear hath not heard, and which it hath not 
entered into the heart of man to conceive.' " 

" It is a brave dream. It were pleasant to re- 



AN INTERVIEW. 33 

cline in the bowers of Elysium, to ramble over its 
green fields, and gather its wild flowers. It were 
pleasant, after having been so long tost and torn on 
the stormy voyage of life, to find at last a secure 
haven in which our shattered bark may be refitted, 
and prepared to ride the ocean again in pride and 
safety. It may be that there is that haven. It may 
be that those green fields await us, and that we 
shall ramble over them together, and enjoy their 
beauty. It may be that we shall recline in those 
bowers and recount all that we thought, hoped, 
joyed, or sorrowed, amidst the trials and strug- 
gles, successes and defeats of our earthly pilgrim- 
age. It is a blissful dream. I may sometimes 
wish to awake and find it a reality. Dream on 
then, dearest Elizabeth. I will not awake you. 
Who knows but your dreams may turn out to be 
truer than my waking wisdom ? No : I will be no 
cloud over the sunlight of your soul. If there be 
a God, perhaps he may one day reveal himself to 
me also, and I may hope as well as you." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE INQUIRY MEETING. 

Elizabeth took my last remarks for more than 
they were worth, and imagined me much nearer 
the kingdom of heaven than I really was. She 
was far from foreseeing the long and severe battle 
I had yet to fight with doubt and unbelief. She 
therefore requested me to accompany her to an 
inquiry meeting, and unwilling to grieve her by a 
refusal, I consented, and we departed. 

Inquiry meetings were not, as the name would 
seem to indicate, meetings for the investigation of 
any points of doctrine or practice ; but simply for 
the purpose of ascertaining the state of the souls 
of such as were seeking or had recently " obtained 
a hope." They were, at the time of which I 
speak, very frequent, and held among the most 
efficient means of pulling down the kingdom of 
Satan and building up that of God's dear Son. 
They are, if I am rightly informed, less frequent 
now, and held in altogether less repute. Whether 
this be owing to the fact, that other and more effi- 
cient means for converting the soul have been 



THE INQUIRY MEETING. 35 

found out, or that men care less about the soul's 
salvation than they did, I am unable to say. I 
should, however, be sorry to believe that any part 
of the revival machinery formerly so much in use 
had been abandoned through indifference to reli- 
gion, or to the welfare of man either for time or 
• eternity. 

There was unquestionably much in the revival 
measures which no enlightened friend of reli- 
gion can approve, but I have been prone of late 
to question the perfect wisdom of those who con- 
demned them indiscriminately. The religious 
world had become all but dead, the church had 
lost nearly all sense of its mission, and men's in- 
difference to their duties both as religious beings 
and as social, had become frightful. This world 
engrossed all minds and hearts, and the whole 
community seemed lost to all worship but that of 
Mammon. Something was necessary to awaken 
the slumbering conscience, to rescue men from 
the all-absorbing selfishness and worldly-minded- 
ness which had become so universal ; to make 
them conscious of their higher and better nature ; 
to make them feel that they were created for a 
nobler end than that of amassing an estate, con- 
tinuing the race, and rotting in the grave. Some 
few there were who felt this. They saw the gross 
wickedness and sensuality of the times ; they 
roused themselves and set themselves at work to 
effect a reform. Their zeal was far from being 



36 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

always according to knowledge ; their efforts from 
resulting in the production of unmixed good ; but 
they succeeded in shaking the dry bones, in re- 
viving a good work, in preparing, — unless I am 
greatly mistaken, — a more advanced state of the 
church and of society. Though once one, of their 
most violent and indefatigable opponents, I have 
long since regarded them with a friendly eye. 
They undoubtedly engendered much fanaticism, 
much bigotry and sectarian animosity ; but these, 
after all, disastrous as they may be, are less to be 
deprecated, than the selfishness and indifference 
they aimed to remove. 

On our arrival at the place of meeting, we were 
separated, — Elizabeth, as having found religion, 
was conducted to the saints' apartment, and I, as 
being at best nothing more than a seeker, was 
ushered into the room occupied by the sinners. 
This was a large room in a private dwelling, much 
crowded — as sinners' apartments always are. It 
presented to my eye, on entering, a varied and even 
a touching aspect. In it, as in the tomb, were 
brought together the representatives of both sexes, 
all ages and all conditions. Here was the old 
man of threescore and ten, with whitened head 
palsied arm, and broken frame, bewailing a 
misspent life, and trembling with fearful appre- 
hension of a judgment to come. By his side was 
the boy with chubby face and flaxen locks, his 
bright blue eyes swollen with weeping for sins he 



THE INQUIRY MEETING. 37 

had not yet learned even by name. A little further 
on was a middle aged man, his strong athletic 
frame writhing and contorting under a guilty con- 
science. I turned with horror from his countenance, 
which bore witness that the fires of hell were doing 
their strange work within. My eyes rested a mo- 
ment on a conspicuous seat, where sat the village 
trader, and the village lawyer, trying in vain to 
look sad and penitent. Not for their sins were 
they there. They were there, the one because he 
wanted more customers and better bargains, the 
other because he wanted more fees and more 
votes. I set them down as incorrigible, and 
turned towards a distant corner of the room to 
observe the subdued mien of a young maiden, I 
had known as the gayest among the gay, and the 
loveliest among the lovely. Yet she was pure and 
fit for heaven. She was there to find, not forgive- 
ness for sins, but a soothing balm for a heart which 
a false wretch had betrayed and broken. But a 
truce with description. 

I was allowed but a moment to look around and 
collect myself, after I had taken a seat to which 
some one had motioned me, before I was accosted 
by Mr. Wilson, the clergyman in whose parish the 
Revival had at first broken out. Mr. Wilson and 
myself were but barely known to each other. He 
was one of those men from whom I have through 
life instinctively recoiled. He was about forty-five 
years of age, well made, a commanding figure, 



38 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

and of gentlemanly and to most people an engag- 
ing person and address. He had been originally 
a lawyer, but had some time since abandoned the 
bar for the pulpit. He had seen much of the 
world, — was familiar with men, acquainted with 
human nature — on its dark side — and had of 
course a sovereign contempt of man and his capa- 
bilities. His intellectual powers were respectable, 
his religious feelings strong and active, and his 
moral sentiments weak and sluggish. He would 
never enter a church without taking off his hat, 
but he could pass a poor widow without thinking 
of her wants ; he would do much for evangelizing 
the world and converting it to his creed, but very 
little for civilizing it, and making the earth the 
abode of love and peace. But whatever he was, 
he contrived to throw a veil of sanctity over the 
unseemly features of his character, and to pass 
himself off with the multitude as a saint of the 
first water. 

" Mr. Elwood," said he, in a low and respectful 
tone, " I am glad to see you here. Religion is 
worthy of the homage of the mind in its dawn, 
and in its noonday glory. It is truly refreshing to 
the friends of Jesus, to see young men of talents 
and education coming forward to inquire the way 
to Zion. Have you long been concerned for the 
salvation of your soul ? " 

" No, sir," I replied. " But I have thought 
long and anxiously on the subject of religion." 



THE INQUIRY MEETING. 39 

" He who has done that, will not long remain 
indifferent to his soul's salvation." 

" Perhaps not, in general ; but for myself, I 
care little about my soul or anything else that 
belongs to me. I am not worth caring for. But 1 
would know if I ought to regard this miserable life 
as the term of man's existence, — if there be in- 
deed a God who holds the destinies of the universe, 
and to whom vice and virtue are not indifferent." 

" I fear, my dear sir, that you have indulged in 
some unprofitable, not to say presumptuous specu- 
lations. We must not strive to be wise above what 
is written. The world is full of mysteries and we 
cannot hope to unravel them all. We should seek 
to believe rather than to comprehend." 
/y " I am not so vain as to hope to clear up all 
mysteries ; but I must know what and wherefore I 
believe, — what and wherefore I worship. Even 
your master reproves those who worship they 
c know not what,' and I must have a reason for 
the faith I avow." 

" Take care that you do not rely too much on 
reason. Reason is a feeble and a false light, that 
dazzles but to blind. We should submit our reason 
to the word of God." 

" Be my reason feeble and false as it may, it is 
my only lights and should I extinguish that I should 
be in total darkness. It is reason that distinguishes 
me from the brutes, and till I am willing to become 
a brute, I must insist on using it." 



40 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

" Certainly, my dear sir. Use your reason, but 
bear in mind that it is reason's highest glory to 
listen to the voice of God. But I perceive that 
you are laboring under difficulties which this is 
neither the time nor the place to discuss. Do me 
the favor to call at my house tomorrow at ten 
o'clock, and I will try and relieve your mind of its 
embarrassments." 

So saying, he turned away to address himself 
to his several subjects according to their several 
conditions. To one he whispered hope ; in this 
ear he breathed consolation ; in that he thundered 
rebuke and the startling terrors of the law. I re- 
mained till the meeting broke up, accompanied 
Elizabeth to her home almost in silence, and hur- 
ried to my own lodgings to meditate on the occur- 
rences of the day, and the various topics which 
had come up. My mind was in no enviable state. 
Love, doubt, desire to believe, and inability to be- 
lieve, operating each by turns and all together, 
made me anything but comfortable. I looked for- 
ward with some eagerness to the proposed inter- 
view with Mr. Wilson, but with little hope, it must 
be confessed, of any satisfactory result. 



CHAPTER VI. 

STRUGGLES. 

V We do not pass from belief to doubt, nor from 
doubt to disbelief without a long and severe strug- 
gle. Even after we have become confirmed un- 
believers, there are many remembrances which rise 
up to make us weep that we are not what we were. 
In most cases, religion has been inwoven with all 
our earlier life. It has hallowed all the affections 
and associations which gather round the home of 
our childhood. Each spot, each object, each event 
dear to the memory, has its tale of religion. The 
sister who played with us, smiled when we were 
pleased, wept when we were grieved, — above all 
the mother who stood between us and danger, and 
knelt with us in prayer, speak to us of religion, and 
endear it to our hearts. Whenever we break 
away from it, we seem to ourselves to be breaking 
away from the whole past, — from all that we have 
loved, have hoped, feared, thought, enjoyed or 
suffered, and to be rushing upon a new and untried 
existence. It is a fearful change which then comes 



42 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

over us. To be no longer what we have been, to 
lose sight of all that has been familiar to us, to 
enter upon we know not what, upon a state of 
being the issues of which we see not, and of which 
we can foretell nothing, — what is this different in 
reality from that event which men call death ? 

Over every one who once doubts the creed in 
which he has been reared, does this change come. 
The doubt once raised, the man has undergone a 
radical change. He can never be again what he 
has been. The simple faith of his childhood never 
returns. He may attain to conviction, but the 
childlike confidence, the warm trustfulness is gone 
forever. From that time henceforth, he must battle 
his way in the dark, with doubts, perplexities, in- 
solvable problems as best he may. And to all this, 
of which we have at first a forefeeling, think not, 
that we bring ourselves to consent without a 
struggle. 

Religion is life's poesy. It breathes a living 
soul into the universe, and gives us everywhere a 
bright and loving spirit with which to hold sweet 
and mystic communings. On every object around 
us it sheds a mellow light, and throws a veil over 
all the stern and forbidding features of reality. 
Bitter is the day which raises that veil, and bids 
that mellowing light be withdrawn ; when for the 
first time we look into the heavens, and see no 
spirit shining there, over the rich and flowering 
earth and see no spirit blooming there, abroad 



STRUGGLES. 43 

over a world of silent, senseless matter, and feel 
that we are — alone. I shall never forget that day ; 
and I have no doubt that I shall see all the objects 
of sense, one after another, fade away and lose 
themselves in the darkness of death, with far less 
shrinking of soul, than I saw my childhood's faith 
depart, and felt the terrible conviction fastening 
itself upon me that all must go, — God, Christ, 
Immortality, that which my fathers had believed, 
for which they had toiled, lived, suffered, died, 
which my mother had cherished and infused into 
my being with the milk from her breast, — all, all, 
even to the last and dearest article must vanish 
and be to me henceforth but as a dream which 
cannot be recalled. 

The world may not give me credit for feeling 
so much, for the world may have misconceived my 
real character. It has allowed me the stronger, 
the harsher, but denied me the softer and more 
amiable qualities of our nature. It has supposed 
me incapable of generous sympathies and firm 
attachments. But the world has not known me : 
at least as I should have been, had it not been for 
the unfriendly circumstances of my earlier life 
which forced into notice much which in ordinary 
cases is concealed, and gave a disproportionate 
development to qualities, of which nature gave me 
indeed the germ, but which she never intended 
should form the prominent traits of my character. 
My youth was one of hardship, privation and suf- 



44 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

fering. My life has been a continual warfare with 
principles and doctrines which I have found in 
power, but which have appeared to me false and 
mischievous. I have almost always stood alone,- 
battling single-handed for the unpopular cause, the 
unfashionable party, the heretical truth. My hand 
has been against every man, and every man's hand 
has been against me. Yet have I ever yearned 
towards my race, and separated from them only 
with the keenest regret. I have ever been found 
on the side of the future, the first to seek out and 
recognise the sheep-skin and goat-skin-clad proph- 
ets of God ; and yet have I ever stood in awe before 
the weird Past, and beheld with reverence all that 
over which the stream of ages has rolled, over 
which has ebbed and flowed the tide of human 
life through many generations. 

We know little of what passes in the hearts of 
our most intimate friends, what concealed wells of 
deep feeling, and holy sentiment, and gushing 
sympathy there are in those even who appear to 
us careless, cold and superficial. We all wear 
masks to one another, and it is not in our power to 
unmask ourselves even if we would. We are all 
better than our best friends believe us. Could we 
but lay open our hearts to one another, and be seen 
by each other as we really are, hatred would cease, 
contempt of man by man would find no place, 
brother would bring no railing accusation against 
brother, unholy strife would end, discord die away, 



STRUGGLES. 45 

and love, joy and peace would reign. O, we know 
not what treasures of rich and holy feeling our 
ignorance of each other's better nature leads us 
to throw away, or to trample under our feet. He 
had a deep insight into human nature who made it. 
the law of his morality that we should love our 
neighbors as ourselves. 

I know that in all this I shall but excite a smile 
in the men of the world, who fancy that to sneer 
at human nature, and to distrust the capacities of 
the human soul, is a mark of superior wisdom, and 
especially in those who deem abhorrence of the 
infidel the most grateful incense to God ; but I can 
assure these men of the world that I too have lived 
in the world, and have studied men not less than I 
have man ; and can speak from experience as well 
as they. They may laugh at w T hat they may please 
to call my folly, but for myself, I can bear to be 
laughed at without losing my temper, and I am 
able in most cases to find something to commend, 
to love and reverence, even in those who deride 
me. They are better than they think themselves. 

Religion I had loved from my infancy. In my 
loneliness, in my solitary wanderings, it had been 
my companion and my support. It had been my 
pleasure to feel that wherever I went the eye of 
my Father watched over me, and his infinite love 
embraced me. I was never in reality alone. A 
glorious Presence went always with me. When I 
was thrown upon the world at a tender age without 



46 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

a friend, and left to buffet my way unaided, un- 
encouraged, and felt myself cut off from all com- 
munion with my kind, I could hold sweet and myste- 
rious communion with the Father of men ; and when 
I smarted under a sense of wrong done me, I could 
find relief in believing that God. sympathized with 
me, and made my cause his own. God had been 
to me a reality, and though I had been nurtured in 
the tenets of the gloomiest and most chilling of 
Christian creeds, I had always seen him as a 
father, and as a father whose face ever beamed 
with paternal love. I could not then lose my faith, 
and see all my religious hopes and consolations 
escape in the darkness of unbelief, without feeling 
that I was giving up all that had hitherto sustain- 
ed me, all that it was pleasant to remember, that 
could soothe in sorrow, strengthen under trial, in- 
spire love, and give the wish or the courage to live. 



CHAPTER VII. 

AUTHORITY. 

I called on Mr. Wilson at the hour appointed. 
I found him alone in his Library looking over 
the Sy st erne de la Nature. " I was trying to as- 
certain," he remarked, after the usual salutations, 
" what it is atheists find to allege against the ex- 
istence of God. But here is merely the blind 
rage of an old man against an authority that 
should have sent him to the Bastille." 

" But you would not," I interrupted, " rely on 
such arguments as are drawn from the Bastille, I 
presume ? " 

" No. Such arguments no longer comport with 
the spirit of the age. But I do wish men to feel 
that there is an authority to which they are ac- 
countable for their opinions not less than for their 
actions." 

" Men are doubtless accountable to the truth 
for the opinions they entertain ; but not, I take it, 
to one another." 

" I allow no man to dictate to me what I shall 



48 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

believe or disbelieve ; but I own that I feel myself 
bound to believe what God commands, and that I 
am guilty of rebellion if I do not." 

" Not unless what he commands be true ? " 
" His commands are the highest conceivable 
evidence of truth." 

" I do not perceive that." 

" God is the God of truth, and what he com- 
mands to be believed must needs therefore be 
true." 

" If he commands me to commit murder, am I 
to believe that murder is right ? " 
" Whatever he commands is right." 
" Right because he commands it ; or does he 
command it because it is right ? " 

" It is right because he commands it." 
" Does the command make the right, or only 
evidence it ? " 
" Makes it." 

" Whatever is commanded then must be right." 
" Whatever is commanded by God." 
" Why what is commanded by him rather than 
by some other being ? " 

" Because he is absolute sovereign, and an 
absolute sovereign has the right to command what 
he pleases, and what he has the right to com- 
mand it cannot in the nature of things be wrong 
for us to do." 

" But in what does God's sovereignty consist, 
in his power or in his justice ? " 



AUTHORITY. 49 

" It consists in the fact that he is God." 

" But is not justice essential to sovereignty ? " 

" We say so, in regard to earthly sovereigns, 
because their sovereignty is not absolute, but de- 
rived. God is an absolute sovereign, and is there- 
fore the supreme, the highest, the ultimate. You 
cannot therefore conceive him bound to conform 
to justice or right, or something above him, unless 
you can conceive of something higher than the 
Highest, more ultimate than the Ultimate itself." 

" You hold yourself then always bound to do 
the will of God." 

" Most certainly." 

c ' The will of God, you hold, makes the right ? " 

" Yes." 

" Then you deny that right is something eter- 
nal, and of course all necessary distinctions be- 
tween right and wrong." 

" Not at all. Perhaps in strictness I should say, 
God does not make the right in itself, for he is it. 
The highest conception we can form of right, for 
us human beings, is conformity to the will of God. 
And this is right for us, because God is absolute 
and eternal and immutable right, and what he 
wills is willed by right." 

" But if your God had chanced to have possess- 
ed the character you Christians ascribe to the 
Devil, then right would have been what is now 
wrong, and w r hat is now termed devilish would 
have been termed godly." 
4 



50 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" As to that I know nothing, God is, what he is ; 
and being what he is, right is what it is. If the 
highest could have been different from what it is, 
and have issued different commands from what it 
now does, no doubt right, good and evil, just and 
unjust would have been different from what they 
now are. But what of that ? If there had been 
nothing, nothing would have been. The Divine 
Being is what he is, not from an external necessity, 
but an eternal and invincible indwelling neces- 
sity." 

" Well, be it so. But admitting his commands 
are obligatory upon us, that we are bound to be- 
lieve what he has commanded, I suppose you 
allow me the free exercise of my reason in judg- 
ing whether what is alleged to be his command, be 
in reality his command, and also in ascertaining 
its purport ? " 

" Hardly. Reason before the Fall might have 
been competent to judge of these matters ; but is 
not now unless it have been regenerated by the 
Holy Ghost." 

" Then you prohibit the exercise of reason ? " 

" Not at all. Reason is the power or faculty of 
deducing from certain data certain conclusions. 
When limited to the work of deduction, I approve 
it. But when it aspires to fix its premises, deter- 
mine the data from which it should draw its in- 
ferences, it leaves its province, attempts what 
must ever exceed its powers, and should of course 
be rebuked." 



AUTHORITY. 51 

" I thank you for your definition of reason. 
It is simply the power of drawing inferences. But 
aside from reason in this sense, you recognise 
in man, I presume, a power of perceiving, taking 
cognizance of the premises or data from which the 
reason makes its deduction ? " 

" No power or faculty capable of recognising 
God, or divine things ; at least not till after re- 
generation." 

" But if we have no faculty by which we can 
take cognizance of the data, and even judge 
whether they are well grounded or not, what con- 
fidence can we place in the deductions of reason ? " 

" None, except when we have the authority of 
God for our data. It is only when we reason 
from the revealed word of God, that we can rely 
with any certainty on reason." 

" But, suppose I chance to doubt that what you 
call the revealed word of God is his word, how 
am I to satisfy myself that it is his word ? If 
reason cannot determine that question, it must 
always work with uncertain premises, and never 
give us any thing more than skepticism. But it is 
idle to discuss this question. If our reason is 
below it, it is above us, and therefore not for us. 
If the alleged word of God be above my reason, it 
can be of no use to me. That, which I cannot 
comprehend, which I cannot ascertain to be true, 
is for me as though it were not. A Revelation is 
no revelation at all, if I cannot comprehend its 



52 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

purport, and know that it is from God. But if 
I have no power or faculty by which I can attain 
to the cognition of Divine things, no divine revela- 
tion can be made to me." 

" You can attain to the cognition of Divine things 
when you shall have been regenerated, not be- 
fore." 

" I will wait till then. For, if I cannot under- 
stand aught of God till then, I can have till then 
no evidence that I ought to be regenerated. But, 
sir, all this is wide of the mark. What is the use 
of talking to me of the authority of God, of the 
word of God, when I do not even believe that there 
is a God ? " 

u Not believe there is a God ! Of that there is 
abundance of evidence." 

" For you doubtless, who have been regenerated ; 
but for me who have only my natural faculties, 
and who according to you have no faculty by 
which I can take cognizance of Divine things, I 
should like to know what evidence there is ? " 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ARGUMENT FROM NATURE. 



" I forgive your sneer ; but that there is a God, 
it appears to me, no man can really doubt, who 
has eyes to look abroad on nature. Every object 
I see from the spire of grass to the heavenly bodies 
proclaims to me the existence of God." 

u Because you see them only with the eyes of 
the believer. You believe in God, and therefore 
do not want any proof. You transport God from 
your own mind into nature, and therefore find 
him there. But, if you had not a real or imagin- 
ary God within you, I much question whether you 
would discover one in nature. To me nature 
indicates merely its own existence, and says 
nothing of any existence beyond itself." 

" Nature is an effect, and every effect implies a 
cause." 

" When you call nature an effect, you assume 
the point in question. Is nature an effect ? " 

" Nature is. It did not make itself. It must 
then have been made. If made, it is an effect." 



54 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" This is a mere change of terms without any 
progress in the argument. I ask your proof that 
nature was made." 

"Its simple existence is a proof that it was 
made, unless you are prepared to say that it came 
by chance." 

" I know nothing of chance : no atheist believes 
in chance. But I am not driven to the alter- 
native you suppose. Before I shall be under 
the necessity of admitting the world came by 
chance, you must prove that it ever did come at 
all." 

" But it is here, and of course must have come, 
either by chance or a maker." 

" You say nature is here ; I might ask you, where ? 
but let that pass. The world is, that I grant; but I 
pray you to inform me how from simple existence 
you infer a maker ? Can nothing exist without a 
maker ? " 

" Nothing, except Him who makes all things." 

" Your exception is fatal to your argument. If 
there can be one existence without a maker, then 
simple existence does not imply a maker. You 
have told me the world must have had a maker, 
simply because it is. This reasoning rests for its 
legitimacy on the assumption that nothing can ex- 
ist without a cause. But you now tell me of an 
existence which is uncaused, that is, the existence 
of him who caused all things." 

"I mean merely to assert that nothing can 
begin to exist without a causa " 



ARGUMENT FROM NATURE. 55 

u According to the principles of reasoning you 
have adopted, you cannot maintain even this posi- 
tion ; but I will for the present accede to it. No- 
thing can begin to exist without a cause. You will 
now, I presume, give me your proofs, that the world 
had a beginning." 

" That this world had a beginning, is not diffi- 
cult to prove. Look around you. Does not every 
thing change under the eye of the spectator ? Fix 
your eyes, if you can, on a single object which is 
the same that it was, or that does not bear the 
traces of having begun to exist.'" 

u Apparently there are changes and transforma- 
tions going on continually around us. You see that 
flower. A short time since it was a mere bud upon 
its stalk. You may have watched it grow and de- 
velope itself. But after all what have you seen ? 
Simply certain facts of the plant itself. Had your 
eyes been stronger you might have seen all these 
facts when you first looked as well as now ; for 
they all existed then. These facts which we 
learn one after another, we call changes, because 
they are presented to our inspection successively, 
in what we name time. But what is time ? It is 
nothing. It but marks the order in which we be- 
come acquainted with the phenomena of the uni- 
verse, whether it be the universe without or within 
us. We study the universe by parcels, and hence 
the idea of succession. But to an eye that could 
take in the whole at once, nature would doubtless 



56 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

appear as one vast whole. You theologians tell us 
that with God there is no time. He inhabiteth 
eternity. With him all is an eternal now. To him 
there can be nothing new, nothing old, no succes- 
sion of events, and consequently no change. What 
then we short-sighted mortals call changes, would, 
could we but see the whole at one glance, appear 
but contemporary parts of one immutable and in- 
dissoluble whole. The more we study nature the 
greater is the number, the variety of the phenome- 
na which present themselves to our inspection ; and 
though these phenomena present themselves, as 
we say, successively, still all we can say of them 
is that they are parts of the universe itself, and 
from which nothing is to be inferred beyond the 
universe of which they are contemporary and con- 
stituent parts." 

" Your remarks are quite too metaphysical for 
my understanding. But nobody can really doubt 
that this world began to exist. If any farther evi- 
dence of this fact were wanted we could find it in 
the marks of design which we everywhere see 
around us. Now design necessarily establishes 
the existence of a designer. If the universe be 
proved to be the product of a designer, you will 
not question but it had a beginning." 

" Of course not. But I am inclined to think you 
will hardly succeed in establishing design, till you 
have established the fact that the universe began to 
exist." 



ARGUMENT FROM NATURE. 57 

" Can you mark the order, the regularity, the 
adaptation of one thing to another, everywhere ob- 
vious in nature, and not regard it as the work of 
design ?" 

"There is, sir, in the whole of your argument, 
and in the arguments of all Natural Theologians I 
am acquainted with, an assumption of the very 
point I want proved. You assume everywhere 
that simple existence is the proof of a maker. The 
existence of nature, you tell me, is a proof that it 
was made. The existence of certain phenomena in 
nature, you tell me, is a proof that they are the ef- 
fect of design. Now, in all this argumentation 
there is this grand defect ; your inferences require 
that your premises should be universally true. If 
it were true that nothing could exist without a 
cause, your inferences would be just. But you 
deny the universality of the proposition, because, 
were it admitted, it would follow that nothing does 
or can exist. Your God, inasmuch as he is sup- 
posed to exist, would require a maker as well as 
the universe. Now I see nature as it is. When I 
examine it, I find what from their analogy to the 
same things in art, I call order, regularity, adapta- 
tion of one thing to another ; but these words, or- 
der, regularity, adaptation, only name certain facts 
which exist in nature. These facts prove nothing 
more than the simple character of nature as it ap- 
pears to my observation. At least, unless you are 
prepared to say that they cannot exist without a 
creator." 



58 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" I am prepared to say that." 

iC And I, sir, am prepared to deny it. I assert 
that they can exist without a creator ; and for 
proof I refer you to nature. You see in nature, 
order, regularity, adaptation. Now prove to me 
that nature was created, or else admit that these 
can exist without a creator." 

" Your argument is defective. You assume the 
world was not made, a point you cannot prove." 

" And you, sir, assume that it was made, a point 
you cannot prove. I have as good a right to as- 
sume the existence in nature of the facts to which 
you refer me as a proof that no creator was neces- 
sary, as you have to assume that existence as a 
proof of the contrary proposition." 

" I point you to order, regularity, adaptation, as 
proofs of design, and from the fact of design I con- 
clude very legitimately to a designer." 

" You point to what you call order, regularity, 
adaptation ; that is, to certain facts of nature, and 
"because these facts exist there you infer that nature 
is the product of a designer. You assume here, as 
I have before told you, that these facts could not 
exist unless they were created. Are you prepar- 
ed to lay it down as a universal proposition that 
the facts you choose to name order, regularity, 
adaptation, can never exist without being crea- 
ted ? " 

" I have hardly reflected on that point, but I 
think I am." 



ARGUMENT FROM NATURE. 59 

" Can there be anything in the effect which is 
not in the cause ? " 

" Explain yourself." 

" Some of you theologians have inferred the ex- 
istence of an intelligent cause of nature, because 
intelligence, to wit, in man, is one of its phenome- 
na. But, say they, if there were no intelligence 
in the cause there could be none in the effect. But 
there is intelligence in the effect. Therefore there 
is intelligence in the cause. Thus Paley, from the 
benevolent tendency of creation, concludes to the 
benevolence of its creator. If there be benevo- 
lence in the effect, he infers there must be in the 
cause. So if there be order, regularity, adaptation 
in the effect, why not in the cause ? Now if there 
were no order, no regularity, no fitness, (for this 
is what we mean by adaptation) in God, could 
there be any in his works ? " 

" Of course not." 

" And in him these must exist uncaused. You 
will not contend now, I presume, that these cannot 
exist without being created, since you are forced 
to admit that they exist in God. The bare exist- 
ence then of the facts termed order, regularity, 
fitness, is not a proof that they are created, or the 
product of a designer. If they exist in one instance, 
as you must admit they can, without a maker, I 
ask you how then simple existence proves that 
they cannot in another ? In order to make out your 
case, it is necessary that you should point these out 



60 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

to me, in a world which you have proved to have 
had a beginning. If you could prove the world 
had a beginning in time, your argumentation would 
be conclusive. Design doubtless implies a de- 
signer, and a work of design doubtless has a be- 
ginning ; but you must first prove that the universe 
had a beginning before you can establish the fact 
of design. This you have not done, and I see not 
how you can do it. The world is ; this is all I 
know. Its existence is to me an enigma I cannot 
solve. If you undertake to solve it by referring 
to another existence beyond it as its cause, you 
merely place the difficulty a step farther back, but 
do not obviate it. I should find the same enigma 
in the existence of its cause, for how could that 
existence be without a cause ? No matter how 
far you extend the chain of sequences, the same 
problem ever recurs. I have sought in vain to 
solve it." 

" Well, Mr. Elwood, we have hardly come to 
any result, and I am sorry to say that I am unable 
to continue the discussion longer at present. You 
have taken a somewhat different ground from what 
I anticipated, and some of your arguments are 
ingenious, and show a mind which I am sorry to 
see thrown away on the barren waste of atheism. 
You were made for better things, for a nobler des- 
tiny. Call on me again day after tomorrow, and 
I shall be at leisure, to continue the discussion ; 
and I hope with a happier issue. Good day, my 
friend." 



ARGUMENT FROM NATURE. 61 

This conversation merely shows the insufficiency 
of the common argument from nature, an argu- 
ment much insisted on by those who seek argu- 
ments for others not for themselves ; but which is 
quite too easily set aside. Perhaps no man has 
stated this argument better than Paley in his 
Natural Theology, and yet it was that work which 
first raised my doubts of the existence of God. 
If Paley had really felt the need of convincing 
himself of the being of a God, he never could have 
written that book. No man is ever converted to 
Theism by the argument from nature. And the 
reason why that argument is relied on is because it is 
the most easily adduced, and those who use it, feel- 
ing no need of any argument for themselves, think 
it ought to silence the atheist. I shall have occasion 
to show, before I get through, that no man does 
ever really deny the existence of God. Men may 
reject the term, but never the reality. The ex- 
istence of God is never proved, and never needs 
to be proved. All the atheist wants is to analyze 
his own faith, and whenever he does that he will 
find God at the bottom. But to analyze one's own 
faith is a matter which requires some close think- 
ing, and the Natural Theologians would fain get 
along without thinking. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE SACRIFICE. 



While the conversation I have just detailed was 
going on, there was another conversation held be- 
tween veiy different parties, and in which I also 
was interested. Mr. Smith, my morning visiter, 
of whom I have given some account, early sought 
out Elizabeth, apparently for the purpose of con- 
gratulating her on her recent conversion. He 
found her alone, with the Bible open before her, 
absorbed in deep meditation. 

I have said Mr. Smith was in the main an honest, 
well-meaning man. Nobody could really doubt 
his sincerity or his ardent desire to save souls ; but 
he had been so accustomed to dwell on another 
world, to see a material and burning hell before 
him, that this world and all the social feelings and 
duties which belong to it, had lost nearly all hold 
upon his conscience and his heart. His whole 
mind seemed contracted to one burning thought — 
hell, and his whole soul to one all-absorbing de- 
sire, — escape from hell for himself and others. 



THE SACRIFICE. 63 

To this end he counted no sacrifice, valued no 
kind feeling, social harmony, domestic peace or 
love. So intent was he upon gaining this end, so 
eager was he after it, that he rudely dashed against 
the most sacred relations of private life, hurled 
husband against wife, wife against husband, parent 
against child, and child against parent, brother 
against sister, and sister against brother. In his 
heart he would be and doubtless thought himself little 
less than an angel of God ; but he passed through 
society, over the domestic hearth, a minister of 
wrath, scattering blight and death. He had now 
come to dash with poison the cup of life for Eliza- 
beth, and to exert the influence he had accidentally 
acquired over her, to blast her brightest prospects 
and wither her purest and holiest affections. 

" In deep meditation ! " said he, approaching 
her, and speaking in as gentle and respectful a tone, 
as such a being could ; " In deep meditation ! 
Thinking, I presume, on your happy escape from 
the pit of burning. You have great reason to bless 
God for the work of grace he has done for your 
soul." 

" I do bless God ; but I was not thinking of 
what he had done for me." 

" Is it possible that you can for one moment be 
thinking of anything else ? " 

" I hope I shall never forget what God has done 
for me, but I had for one moment forgotten my- 
self. And is there not danger that those who have 



64 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

been recently converted may think too much of 
what God has done for them, merely because it is 
for them rather than for others that he has done 
it ? " 

" O, you were thinking of another! " 

" I hope there is no harm in escaping sometimes 
from ourselves to think of our friends." 

" Perhaps not. But of whom were you think- 
ing ? " 

" O, sir, your profession is too grave to con- 
cern itself with the idle thoughts of a silly girl." 

" If your thoughts are idle, you should not in- 
dulge them, for you must one day account for 
every idle thought to God. If they are serious 
thoughts you need not blush to disclose them to 
one of God's ministers." 

" Sir, there may be subjects strictly our own, 
and with which no stranger, whatever his pro- 
fession, has a right, or should be suffered to in- 
termeddle. Some spot is there in every heart, 
which should be sacred from the stranger's foot." 

" God knows those subjects ; you cannot con- 
ceal them from him; and why seek to conceal 
them from his ministers ? " 

" The heart, sir, hath joys and sorrows to be 
shared only with those whom the heart selects." 

" I understand you. I am not to have your 
confidence in a matter which intimately concerns 
your everlasting welfare. When I saw you sink- 
ing down to irretrievable wo, I warned you of your 



THE SACRIFICE. 65 

danger ; and now when I see you about rushing 
into a connexion which can end only in your eter- 
nal ruin, I am not to be deterred from telling you 
of the awful peril you run." 

" Mr. Smith, this is a subject on which you and 
I cannot converse ; and I entreat you to say no 
more." 

" I will speak, and you shall hear ; I have come 
to you from God, commanded to talk to you on 
this very topic. It may pain you, but better that 
you suffer now, than hereafter." 

"I beseech you, say no more." 

" Stay ; I must do my duty. I have a message 
from God and I must deliver it. God forbids this 
union which you contemplate. The Holy Ghost 
says c be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers, 
for what concord hath Christ with Belial, or he 
that believeth with an infidel ? and what agreement 
hath God with idols ? 5 You by your conversion 
have become a temple of the living God, and 
dare you suffer yourself to be desecrated by an 
atheist ? " 

" Surely, sir, you do not suppose that passage 
alludes to marriage, or that if it does it is to be 
taken literally ? " 

" I suppose the Holy Ghost means what he says. 
I am not wise enough to correct either his language 
or his meaning." 

" But Paul says the unbelieving wife shall be 
5 



66 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

sanctified by the believing husband, and the unbe- 
lieving husband by the believing wife." 

" True ; but he said that in reference to those 
who had been married before either became a 
believer, in order to satisfy any scruples of con- 
science they might feel about living together as 
man and wife, after one or the other had been 
converted to Christianity." 

" That suits my case. Charles and I were con- 
tracted before I was converted. Before that event, 
we had pledged our faith, and were married in the 
eyes of Heaven, as much as we shall be after man 
has performed the customary legal ceremony." 

" That is a dangerous doctrine, and one which 
I never expected to hear from a young lady, unless 
of avowed licentious principles. You are not mar- 
ried. You have only given your consent to be 
married on some future day. But when you gave 
that consent you were in nature's darkness ; you 
knew not what you did. Your eyes are now 
opened ; you now see the wickedness of denying 
God. The Holy Ghost commands you to recall 
that consent, or yours must be the peril." 

" I fear no other danger than that of doing 
wrong. But you do not know Charles. He would 
gladly be a Christian, and when he left me yester- 
day, I could not but hope that he was not far from 
the kingdom of heaven." 

" Delusion all ! No man can be further from 
the kingdom of heaven than he who denies both 



THE SACRIFICE. 67 

God and heaven. I tell you he is a hardened in- 
fidel." And then as if half suspecting that he had 
said too much, he added, " Still I do not know but 
you may be the chosen instrument of bringing him 
into the church. You need not reject him at once ; 
but let him understand that he must give his heart 
to God before you can consent to be his." So 
saying, he left the trembling, nearly distracted 
girl, to go and do his master's work elsewhere.* 

The agony which Elizabeth suffered during this 
whole conversation may be more easily imagined 
than described. She had lavished upon me all the 
wealth of her heart. She had loved me with a 
sincerity and depth of affection, enhanced by the 
apparently unfriendliness of my condition. Like 
a true woman she had clung to me the closer for 

* This must seem to my readers a mere fancy sketch, for 
I presume such conversations do not take place in these 
days ; but they were very common when I was a young 
man. One of the most common methods resorted to by 
revivalists was to make the love which a young man had 
for a young woman, and the love he hoped for in return, 
the means of his conversion to the church. My own case 
was not a singular one. The girl was instructed to throw her 
arms around her lover's neck, and entreat him, by all his 
affection for her, to join the church ; but at the same time to 
assure him, that she could never consent to be his unless 
he gave evidences of conversion. There was some know- 
ledge of human nature in this, and these fair apostles 
were not unfrequently successful as well as eloquent plead- 
ers for God, especially when seconded by the burning 
passions of their youthful admirers. 



68 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

the reason that all else seemed to have abandoned 
me. It is not woman that leaves us when most we 
need her presence. I have had my share of 
adversity ; I have suffered from the world more 
than I care to tell ; but I have ever found in wo- 
man a kind and succoring spirit. Her love has 
ever shed a hallowed light along my pathway, 
cheered me in my darkest hours, and given me 
ever the courage and the strength to battle with 
my enemies, and regain the mastery of myself. 
There are those who speak lightly of woman; I 
have learned to reverence her as the brightest 
earthly manifestation of the Divinity. 

Elizabeth had loved me, and in all her visions 
of the future I of course held a prominent place, 
and it were a foolish affectation to doubt that I con- 
stituted their principal charm. To banish me 
now, to strike my image from her heart, to break 
with me the faith she had plighted, — the thought of 
, it was not to be endured. And yet what a myste- 
rious nature is this of ours ! The very intensity of 
her love for me alarmed her conscience. She had 
been but recently converted, and was still laboring 
under strong excitement. She had just dedicated 
herself to God. She must be his and his only. Did 
she not owe everything to God ? Should she not 
love him with her whole heart, and ought she not 
to sacrifice everything to him ? Was not religion, 
in its very nature, a sacrifice ? Would she not be 
violating its most solemn injunctions, if she retain- 



THE SACRIFICE. 69 

ed anything which she loved more than God ? 
Did she not in fact love me more than him ? I 
was dearer to her than all the world beside ; but 
then would not the sacrifice of me to God be so 
much the more meritorious ? If she retained me 
would it not be a proof, that she counted one trea- 
sure too precious to be surrendered ? Was she 
not commanded to forsake father, mother, sister, 
brother, for God, to give up everything for God, 
which should come between her and him, though 
it should be like plucking out a right eye or cut- 
ting off a right hand ? Must she not now choose 
between God and man, between religion and love ? 
She must. 

I mean not to say that this was sound reason- 
ing ; but I apprehend that it requires no deep in- 
sight into human nature, to be made aware that in 
many individuals, religion is a much stronger pas- 
sion than love, and that in certain states of mind, 
and if the religious affection takes that turn, the 
more costly the sacrifice, the more resolute are we 
to make it. In her calm and rational moments, I do 
not believe Elizabeth would have come to the con- 
clusion she did ; but as she was wrought up to a 
state of pious exaltation, the idea of being able to 
achieve so great a victory over herself, as that of 
sacrificing her love on the altar of religion, ope- 
rated as a powerful spell on her whole nature, and 
blinded her to everything else. It almost instantly 
became as it were a fixed idea, to which every- 



70 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

thing must henceforth be subordinated. Religion 
therefore triumphed, and with a martyr-like spirit, 
she resolved to give me up. Blame her not. If 
she had not possessed a noble nature, such a sacri- 
fice she had never resolved to make. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE DISMISSAL. 



As the fates would have it, I called on Elizabeth 
at the very moment when she had finally taken her 
resolution to sacrifice her love for me to prove that 
her love for God was supreme. My visit was in- 
opportune, — she was embarrassed, and as women 
do sometimes, burst into tears. I was not a little 
astonished, and perhaps not altogether pleased ; for 
I confess I could never yet discover that beauty in 
tears was at all improved, — unless they were tears 
of welcome or of sympathy. " Elizabeth," said I, 
addressing her as gently as I could, " what is this ? 
why do I see you in tears ? " 

" It is but a passing weakness," said she, making 
an effort to command herself, " my first, as I trust 
it will be my last." 

" But why do I find you so agitated ? " 

" Charles," said she, rising and speaking with 
great solemnity, " you and I can henceforth be to 
each other only as friends." 

" Elizabeth, I do not hear you ; I have no ears 
for such words." 



72 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" You must hear me, and believe me. I have 
taken my resolution." 

" Unsay what you have said, and be yourself 
again. Some strange infatuation has seized you 
for the moment, or you are merely trying my 
feelings. You need not doubt my love for you. I 
have given you already all the proofs you can ask, 
or man can give. I must also say, it is hardly in 
character for you to trifle with any one's affections, 
much less with mine." 

" Charles, I am not trifling with your affections, 
nor has any strange infatuation seized me. I speak 
seriously and solemnly. I doubt not that you love 
me as well as man usually loves woman ; and I 
have never disguised from myself nor from you, 
the strong affection I have for you. I have loved 
you as truly, as sincerely as you yourself could 
desire. I may to a certain extent subdue my love ; 
but I shall never forget it. You have been too 
much to me, have played too conspicuous a part in 
all my dreams of the future, to be ever otherwise 
than a dear friend. Woman's heart never forgets. 
The flower of her love may be trampled on, but 
retains ever its fragrance and freshness. It blooms 
immortal. But, Charles, I must be the bride of 
heaven: I have given myself to God, and I must 
be his alone." 

" A formidable rival you have given me ! Pray, 
has your ghostly adviser, whom I saw stealing 
away as I came in, been tutoring you on this sub- 



THEDIS MISSAL. 73 

ject ? He has doubtless told you not to be un- 
equally yoked together with an unbeliever." 

" And if he has, has he not given me good 
advice, not for me, but for you ? To you, do my 
best, I must, unless you should be converted to 
religion, soon appear a weak and silly woman. 
My religious zeal will be in your estimation mere 
fanaticism, and my love to God will seem so much 
abstracted from that which you will claim as due 
to yourself. Difference of belief will lead to dif- 
ference of feeling, to a difference of tastes, and 
aims, and then to coldness, neglect, perhaps dis- 
gust and mutual wretchedness. With views on 
religion, so widely different as ours are, we can 
never enjoy that union of soul which we should 
both crave, and without which we could not be 
happy." 

" I understand nothing of all this. Because you 
love God more, I see not why you need love me 
less. I see no reason why God and I should be 
rivals for your affections. Is the love which you 
have for God of the same kind with the love you 
have heretofore avowed for me ? Can you not 
love God, do your duty to him, and also have a 
heart and a hand for the duties of a wife ? Ac- 
cording to your sacred books, God himself declared 
that it was not good for man to be alone, and there- 
fore made woman to be his help-meet. Can she 
be wanting in her duty to her God, when she lives 
to the end for which he made her ? Woman was 



74 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

made to be man's help-meet if your religion be 
true, and it is her glory to be a wife and a mother." 

" No. I must live for God alone." 

" Some of your divines pretend that we live for 
God, when we live for his children. You talk of 
consecrating yourself to God. Do you intend to 
become a nun ? Does your God ask you to live 
in a cloister and waste your life in singing psalms 
and repeating pater nosters ? " 

" Charles, your questions do but confirm me in 
my resolution. You have no sympathy with that 
religious state of the affections, which I believe 
myself commanded to cultivate. You even now 
think me very foolish and are half angry at me." 

" True. I regard your piety as a weakness ; 
but I see enough else in your character, which is 
not weakness, to enable me to overlook that. On 
the single subject of religion, I of course do not 
and cannot sympathize with you ; but in all else, I 
am unconscious of any want of sympathy. When 
we come to live together, to have the same joys 
and sorrows, the same cares and perplexities, the 
same hopes and fears, in all other respects, I doubt 
not that we shall find that oneness of heart and 
soul, which will secure us as much happiness as 
mortals have any reason to expect." 

" No. Religion must pervade my whole being ; 
it must be inwoven with all my thoughts and feel- 
ings, words and actions. You must meet it every- 
where and at all times, and wherever and whenever 



THE DISMISSAL. 75 

you meet it, I see from the present interview, it 
must offend you." 

" I see no necessity of making your piety every- 
where obtrusive." 

" I must love God with all my heart, mind, soul 
and strength." 

" And your neighbor as yourself, which means, 
I take it, your husband. But why not follow the 
direction of your Saint Paul ? ; Hast thou faith ? 
have it to thyself ? ' If you have pious feelings 
indulge them. Surely, you must have room enough 
left for the proper affections of the wife. It must 
be a strange God in whom you believe, if he should 
be offended to see you studying to make the man 
happy to whom you confess yourself not indif- 
ferent, and to whom you have solemnly plighted 
your faith. Though on this last point I do not in- 
sist. I ask no one to keep faith with me longer 
than it is agreeable. I absolve you from all obli- 
gation to fulfil a promise you rashly, inconsider- 
ately made. You can dismiss me if you please. 
I am not a man likely to complain. I was not 
born to go whining through life. I have already 
learned the lesson to bear. Still you have had 
much influence over me, and, until now, I have 
never conversed with you without wishing myself 
a Christian. The road to the understanding lies 
through the heart. Who can tell but through love 
you may lead me to God, be the means of my con- 
version ? " 



76 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" I know not how that would be ; but weak, im- 
perfect as I am and always must be, I fear I shall 
be more likely to expose my faith to your contempt 
than to commend it to your love and reverence." 

" I know of nothing in the past to warrant your 
fears ; you have not changed half so much as you 
fancy. You have always been religious since I 
have been acquainted with you. I have rarely 
witnessed your sensibility to religion, without re- 
gretting the loss of my early faith. I am not 
certain but it was the religious turn of your mind 
which first attracted my love, and I know that it 
has tended not a little to strengthen and purify it. 
Hopeless myself, a child without a father, I 
have not been displeased to see hope beaming 
from your eyes, and to hear from your lips the 
words, ; My Father.' I have never had an earthly 
father to whom I could apply those words, and it 
is long since I have had one in heaven. As much 
opposed as I am to the nonsense and mischief 
which pass with the multitude under the name 
of religion, yet ever have I felt that I would give 
worlds did I possess them, could I once more feel 
assured that there is another and a better world ; 
could I look up with confidence and say, ' My 
Father.' " 

" Charles, I cannot comprehend you. Can it be 
that you are in reality an infidel, in love as you 
are with all beautiful things and good ? You seem 
to me at times all but devout. You are gentle and 



THE DISMISSAL. 77 

forgiving. I have often known you to risk your 
life for even your enemies. How is this ? Is not 
Christ in you, though you know it not ? Own 
him, I beseech you." 

"And be a hypocrite ? Never. I have lost my 
faith as a Christian, but as long as I live I will 
hold fast to my integrity. I have not the Christian's 
hopes nor his fears ; but I should think meanly 
of myself, had I only the Christian's virtues." 

" I do not understand this. I have always identi- 
fied all moral excellence with belief in Christ, and 
been unable to conceive of any virtue separate 
from Christianity. I have believed that one must 
be born again, and then he would know the truth ; 
and here you are professing to have experienced 
all that others do in the new birth, and at the same 
time denying the existence of God. Is it all a de- 
lusion ? Can I be certain of nothing ? O, Charles 
do not drive me to skepticism, to madness !" 

" Fear me not. To me I own religion appears 
all a delusion. I neither do nor can know any- 
thing about it. But after all you may be right. 
I never set up my own opinions as the measure of 
truth." 

" It is gone. It was but a passing cloud. Re- 
ligion must be true. I have the witness within. I 
feel its truth, and even you own that you at times 
feel the need of it." 

" It is hard to efface early impressions. Rem- 
iniscences of my childhood and youth sometimes 



78 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

come up, and I dream ; but I awake as soon as 
reason dawns." 

u Reason ! Reason ! that is the real soul-de- 
stroyer ! I cannot reason on religion ; I hold it too 
sacred, and I dare not so profane it. I must believe. 
I have always loved religion. It has ever shed a 
hallowed light over the world in which I have lived, 
and made all things around me beautiful and lovely. 
Within a few days I have felt as I never did be- 
fore. God has manifested himself to me as he 
does not to the world. It must be so. I cannot 
mistake my feelings." 

" But they may mislead you." 

" And why more than your logic ? May we 
not err by distrusting our feelings too much ? These 
reminiscences of your early life, as you call them, 
what may they be after all but an outcry from the 
depth of your being for God, — the strivings of 
God's spirit with yours to lead you back to him- 
self?" 

" So I have sometimes fancied it might be. This 
is a mysterious nature of ours, and I pretend not 
to be able to unravel it. It is all dark and inscruta- 
ble to me. Thought, which now penetrates the 
solid marble, pierces through the earth, soars into 
the heavens, and sooner than I can utter the words, 
makes the circuit of the universe, is to me a 
mystery. Love, sympathy, — all the emotions are 
inexplicable ; and not the least so that mystic 
communion of which we are all at times conscious, 



THE DISMISSAL. 79 

that something which often without external me- 
dium advertises us of the presence of the beloved 
object, and enables us to know before hand the 
emotions swelling in another's breast. Then this 
void I am conscious of within, which I am ever 
trying to fill, and which nothing but infinity seems 
capable of filling — this eternal craving of ours to 
break through the narrow bounds of the universe 
and breathe at our ease the free air beyond, — I 
know not what all this means. There are times 
when this world is too small for me, when I seem 
to have that within me which is greater than the 
universe, thoughts and desires which seem inhabit- 
ants of eternity. At times they startle me ; but 
they are the freaks of a wanton imagination ; they 
are fantasy all." 

" I know not that. May they not be the soul's 
reminiscences of God, its native land ? Are we 
not exiles from our home ? and are not these 
thoughts and desires our sighs and yearnings for a 
return ? " 

" So perhaps old Plato would have said. But I 
dare not trust myself in a region so unsubstantial. 
I leave these matters to the mystics, and confine 
myself to my five senses and the operations of my 
understanding. These vague longings are to me 
only the feverish dreams of a perturbed sleep." 

What would have been the result of our inter- 
view, I know not, had it not been suddenly and 
unexpectedly interrupted. I think I should have 



80 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

shaken Elizabeth's resolution, and she perhaps 
would have soothed my unbelief with visions of 
that mystic land, upon which, unknown to herself, 
she was entering. The natural cure for skepti- 
cism is mysticism, and had we been left to our- 
selves, I think it very possible I should have lost 
my atheism, and lived with Elizabeth a sort of 
theosophic life. But it was otherwise ordered. I 
have already mentioned Elizabeth's brother George. 
With him I had been longer acquainted, than with 
her. I had been able, on my first coming to re- 
side in the neighborhood, to render him some es- 
sential service, which became the prelude to an 
intimacy with him, and, what I had valued some- 
what more, with his sister. George would never 
have been selected by me as a friend, had I not 
served him. He had respectable talents, was well 
educated, but not precisely a man to my taste. 

The last time I had seen him, he was on the 
anxious seats, where he succeeded in becoming 
converted. He was now a saint, and could address 
his former friends and associates as sinners. Con- 
version operates differently on different subjects. 
Some it makes better, manward as well as God- 
ward, sweetening their dispositions, elevating their 
feelings and aims ; others it makes decidedly worse. 
By persuading them that they are saints, it permits 
them to fancy that they can do no wrong because 
they are saints. Of this latter class was my friend 
George. Religion had in him, combined with a 



THE DISMISSAL. 81 

harsh, haughty and vindictive temper, and had 
given him the courage to display what he had pre- 
viously studied to conceal. 

In a social point of view, he was evidently my 
superior. His parents had been notable people in 
their day, and to him and his sister who resided 
with their widowed mother, had descended an 
ample fortune. But I was somewhat of an ad- 
venturer. Nobody knew whence I came, or what 
was my profession or occupation. I could not be 
absolutely poor, but I had evidently not been ac- 
customed to refined society, and it was most likely 
that I was of obscure origin. On these points I 
kept my own counsel. I had perhaps a tale to tell, 
had I chosen ; but I had never learned that a man 
suffered by knowing more of himself than others 
knew of him. I shall not tell the tale now, for it 
would not be credited if I should. But evidently, 
although George had even suggested and en- 
couraged my suit to his sister, he did not now re- 
gard me as the most desirable suitor. Mr. Smith 
and a few other pious friends had conversed with 
him, and given him some advice. 

Entering the room where we were conversing, 
and hastily approaching me, and addressing me in 
a rude and haughty manner, " Sir," said he, " you 
and I have been much together for some time 
past ; I have permitted you to come and go as if 
this house were your home ; I have borne with you 
in the hope that your pernicious principles might 
6 



82 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

be corrected. It is in vain to indulge that hope 
any longer ; and as I do not choose to associate 
with an atheist, you will have the goodness hence- 
forth to spare my sister and myself the pleasure of 
your company. You will find neither of us at 
home to you hereafter." 

" Say not so, brother," exclaimed Elizabeth ; 
" you wrong your own heart ; you wrong the 
charity of the blessed Gospel ; you wrong Charles, 
who you know saved your life at the risk of his 
own." 

" What I have said, I have said," replied he. 

" Say no more, Elizabeth," I interposed. " He 
will, I fear, one day need my forgiveness ; if so, he 
will find it. Farewell, Elizabeth. Otherwise I 
would have parted with you. I know not whether 
the resolution you mentioned when I came in is 
to be regarded as final or not. That is a matter 
which rests with yourself. I am not the man to 
entreat any one to break a resolution in my favor. 
If, however, you alter your mind, you will find me 
as I was. Farewell." 



CHAPTER XL 



PRIESTCRAFT. 



The incidents related in my last chapter, but ill 
prepared me for my second interview with Mr. 
Wilson. In my first interview I was calm, candid, 
willing, even anxious to become, if not a believer 
in all that passes for religion, at least in God and 
immortality. But now I was ruffled, I was exas- 
perated against the clergy, those meddling priests 
as I regarded them ; and I was resolved to combat 
Mr. Wilson's arguments with all the force of reason 
I could master. On this second day I found Mr. 
Wilson where I did before, but not this time alone ; 
some five or six of his brother clergymen were 
with him, all of whom, with faces as grave as a 
church-yard, showed a becoming horror at my ap- 
proach. I was greeted with scarcely a single civil 
word. The clergymen looked up to heaven and 
sighed, hung down their heads and were silent. 

" I have called," said I, addressing myself to 
Mr. Wilson, " to hear what farther you have to 
offer on the subject of our former conversation." 

" Ah, I had forgotten," replied he in a sanctimo- 



84 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

nious tone, " you are the young man with whom I 
had some conversation on the existence of God ; 
was not what I said sufficient to remove your 
doubts ?" 

" No, sir." 

" Then I fear all that I can say will be useless. 
He who denies the existence of God, is too far 
gone in blindness of mind and hardness of heart, 
to be affected by anything short of the omnipotent 
workings of the Holy Ghost. He is past being 
reasoned with. In the language of the Holy Ghost, 
he is a fool." 

" Be that as it may ; if you have any reasons 
to offer, I can hear them ; and if they have any 
weight I can feel them." 

" I will pray for you." 

" I want your reasons, not your prayers." 

" The Scriptures forbid us to cast pearls before 
swine, or to give that which is holy unto dogs." 

" An unnecessary prohibition in your case." 

" Would you insult one of God's ministers ?" 

" I might answer you in the words of one of 
your saints, slightly varied, ; I wist not that thou 
wast a minister of God, thou whited wall ;' but I 
insult no man, and shall always repel insult, let it 
come from whom it may." 

" I perceive, young man, that you are in the gall 
of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity." 

" I am not here, sir, to be informed of my con- 
dition, but at your special invitation, to be resolved 



PRIESTCRAFT. 85 

of certain doubts, which you boasted your skill to 
solve. If you have lost confidence in your ability, 
or if you are otherwise engaged, I can retire." 

" Go to God with your doubts. He only can solve 
them ; you are quarrelling with God. Go and 
make your peace with God." 

" Your directions are admirable. Pity they had 
not occurred to you a little sooner. But be so good 
now as to hear me a moment." 

" I have no wish to hear you." 

" I care not for that ; but hear me you shall. 
You have given me your message, and I will give 
you mine. I, sir, was early taught to love God, 
and I early sought to serve him. I was early 
religious, and for some years found in religion all 
the enjoyment I had. Sectarian dissentions sprung 
up, grieved and finally disgusted me. They com- 
pelled me to ask why I supported Christianity. I 
asked but could not answer ; I went to my min- 
ister, and he told me if I doubted I should be dam- 
ned." 

" And told you the truth," said Mr. Wilson. 

" I went to another, another, and still another, 
and received the same answer. I complained not. 
I resorted to the Bible, read, re-read it, read every 
thing I could lay my hands on that promised to 
throw light on the subject laboring in my mind ; I 
spent years in study ; I prayed, and prayed God, 
by night and by day, to help me. I sought for the 
truth with my whole heart." 



86 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" That is false," interposed one of the clergy- 
men present ; " no man ever prayed to God for the 
truth and remained an atheist." 

" One article after another of my faith went, 
till I found myself at last without hope in immor- 
tality or belief in God. I wept at this result ; but 
I said nothing, — sought to unsettle no one's faith, 
but pursued my way peaceably as a man, a citizen, 
and a friend. At the request of one, whose re- 
quest to me is a command, I attended the other 
day one of your inquiry meetings ; you know what 
passed there. At your request I called here, with 
what result, you know as well as I. I am here 
again at your request, and I have thus far, for 
reasons best known to yourselves, received only 
insult and abuse. One word therefore to you, and 
to all who call yourselves ministers of God ; I 
have found you always loud in your professions, 
but always unable or unwilling to give a reason 
for the faith you enjoin. I have ever found you in 
relation to your opponents proud, haughty, over- 
bearing, relentless ; professed preachers of peace 
and love, I have ever found you sowing the seeds 
of discord, meddling with every one's private 
affairs, poisoning the cup of domestic bliss, and 
withering the purest and holiest affections of the 
human heart. You have brought wrath and hatred 
into this hitherto peaceful village ; you have blasted 
my hopes of happiness, done me all the injury man 
can do to man ; and what you have done to me 



PRIESTCRAFT. 87 

you have done to thousands, and will do, so long 
as the world endures your profession. You make 
earth a hell that your own services may be in re- 
quest — make the people believe in a God of wrath 
that you may be employed as mediators between 
them and his vengeance. Did I believe in your 
imaginary place of punishment, I would say to you 
in the words of your master, c Ye serpents, ye 
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the dam- 
nation of hell ?' Hitherto I have treated you with 
respect ; there is war between us now, and earth 
shall be rid of you, or I will die in the attempt. 
Farewell. Before you dream of converting the 
infidel, learn humility, honesty, and good man- 
ners." 

So saying, I left the house and returned to my 
lodgings. When I was gone the reverend gentle- 
men looked at one another and smiled ; " that 
young man," said one of them, " would make a 
most capital preacher were he only on the right 
side." " Perhaps," said another, " he is nearer 
right than we should be willing the world should 
believe." "Never mind," said still another, "the 
people are superstitious ; they will have some kind 
of worship, and we must let them have their way." 
These reverend gentlemen it seems understood 
one another. 



CHAPTER XII. 



IMMORTALITY. 



I Pass over several months in which nothing, I 
can bring myself to relate, of much importance 
occurred. Elizabeth and I met a few times after 
the interview I have mentioned. She was ever 
the same pure-minded, affectionate girl ; but the 
view which she had taken of her duty to God, and 
the struggle which thence ensued between religion 
and love, surrounded as she was by pious friends 
whose zeal for the soul hereafter far outran their 
knowledge of what would constitute its real well- 
being here, preyed upon her health, and threatened 
the worst results. From those results I raise not 
the veil. 

One tie alone was left me, one alone bound me 
to my race, and to virtue. My mother, bowed 
with years and afflictions, still lived, though in a 
distant part of the country. A letter from a distant 
relative with whom she resided, informed me that 
she was very ill, and demanded my presence, as she 
could not survive many days. I need not say this 



IMMORTALITY. 89 

letter afflicted me. I had not seen my mother for 
several years ; not because I wanted filial affec- 
tion, but I had rarely been able to do as I would. 
Poverty is a stern master, and when combined with 
talent and ambition, often compels us to seem 
wanting in most of the better and more amiable 
affections of our nature. I had always loved and 
reverenced my mother ; but her image rose be- 
fore me now as it never had before. It looked 
mournfully upon me, and in the eloquence of 
mute sorrow seemed to upbraid me with neglect, 
and to tell me that I had failed to prove myself a 
good son. 

I lost no time in complying with my mother's 
request. I found her still living, but evidently 
near her last. She recognised me, brightened up 
a moment, thanked me for coming to see her, 
thanked her God that he had permitted her to look 
once more upon the face of her son, her only 
child, and to God, the God in whom she believed, 
who had protected her through life, and in whom 
she had found solace and support under all her 
trials and sorrows, she commended me, with all 
the fervor of undoubting piety, and the warmth of 
maternal love, for time and eternity. The effort 
exhausted her ; she sunk into a sort of lethargy, 
which in a few hours proved to be the sleep of 
death. 

I watched by the lifeless body ; I followed it to 
its resting place in the earth ; went at twilight and 



90 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

stood by the grave which had closed over it. Do 
you ask what were my thoughts and feelings ? 

I was a disbeliever, but I was a man, and had a 
heart ; and not the less a heart because few shared 
its affections. But the feelings with which professed 
believers and unbelievers meet death, either for 
themselves or for others, are very nearly similar. 
When death comes into the circle of our friends 
and sunders the cords of affection, it is backward 
we look, not forward, and we are with the de- 
parted as he lives in our memories, not as he may 
be in our hopes. The hopes nurtured by religion 
are very consoling when grief exists only in anti- 
cipation, or after time has hallowed it ; but they 
have little power in the moment when it actually 
breaks in upon the soul, and pierces the heart. 
Besides, there are few people who know how to 
use their immortality. Death to the great mass 
of believers as well as of unbelievers comes as the 
king of terrors, in the shape of a Total Extinction 
of being. The immortality of the soul is assented 
to rather than believed, — believed rather than lived. 
And withal it is something so far in the distant 
future, that till long after the spirit has left the 
body, we think and speak of the loved ones as no 
more. Rarely does the believer find that relief in 
the doctrine of immortality, which he insists on 
with so much eloquence in his controversy with 
unbelievers. He might find it, he ought to find it, 
and one day will ; but not till he learns that man 
is immortal, and not merely is to be immortal. 



IMMORTALITY. 91 

I lingered several weeks around the grave of my 
mother, and in the neighborhood where she had 
lived. It was the place where I had passed my 
own childhood and youth. It was the scene of 
those early associations which become the dearer to 
us as we leave them the farther behind. I stood 
where I had sported in the freedom of early 
childhood ; but I stood alone, for no one was there 
with whom I could speak of its frolics. One 
feels singularly desolate when he sees only 
strange faces, and hears only strange voices in 
what was the home of his early life. 

I returned to the village where I resided when 
I first introduced myself to my readers. But what 
was that spot to me now ? Nature had done 
much for it, but nature herself is very much what 
we make her. There must be beauty in our souls, 
or we shall see no loveliness in her face ; and 
beauty had died out of my soul. She who might 
have recalled it to life, and thrown its hues over 
all the world was but of that I will not speak. 

It was now that I really needed the hope of im- 
mortality. The world was to me one vast desert, 
and life was without end or aim. The hope of 
immortality is not needed to enable us to bear 
grief, to meet great calamities. These can be, as 
they have been, met by the atheist with a serene 
brow and a tranquil pulse. We need not the hope 
of immortality in order to meet death with com- 
posure. The manner in which we meet death 



92 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

depends altogether more on the state of our nerves 
than the nature of our hopes. But we want it 
when earth has lost its gloss of novelty, when our 
hopes have been blasted, our affections withered, 
and the shortness of life and the vanity of all 
human pursuits have come home to us, and made 
us exclaim, " Vanity of vanities all is vanity ; " 
we w T ant then the hope of immortality to give to 
life an end, an aim. 

We all of us at times feel this want. The in- 
fidel feels it early in life. He learns all too soon, 
what to him is a withering fact, that man does not 
complete his destiny on earth. Man never com- 
pletes anything here. What then shall he do if 
there be no hereafter ? With what courage can I 
betake myself to my task ? I may begin — but 
the grave lies between me and the completion. 
Death will come to interrupt my work, and compel 
me to leave it unfinished. This is more terrible 
to me than the thought of ceasing to be. I could 
almost, — at least, I think I could — consent to be 
no more, after I had finished my work, achieved 
my destiny ; but to die before my work is com- 
pleted, while that destiny is but begun, — this is 
the death which comes to me indeed as a " King of 
Terrors." 

The hope of another life to be the complement 
of this, steps in to save us from this death, to give 
us the courage and the hope to begin. The rough 
sketch shall hereafter become the finished picture, 



IMMORTALITY. 93 

the artist shall give it the last touch at his ease ; 
the science we had just begun shall be completed, 
and the incipient destiny shall be achieved. Fear 
not to begin, thou hast eternity before thee in 
which to end. 

I wanted, at the time of which I speak, this hope, 
I had no future. I was shut up in this narrow life 
as in a cage. All for whom 1 could have lived, 
labored, and died, were gone, or worse than gone. 
I had no end, no aim. My affections were driven 
back to stagnate and become putrid in my own 
breast. I had no one to care for. The world was 
to me as if it were not ; and yet a strange restless- 
ness came over me. I could be still nowhere. I 
roved listlessly from object to object, my body was 
carried from place to place, I knew not why, and 
asked not myself wherefore. And, yet change of 
object, change of scene wrought no change within 
me. I existed, but did not live. He who has no 
future, has no life. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE REFORMER. 



It is no part of my plan to give a minute history 
of my life. My wanderings extended far and 
lasted a weary while; but time at length began to 
exert its healing influence, and I to return slowly 
towards life. I gradually began to make observa- 
tions on what was passing around me, and was at 
length arrested by the imperfections of the social 
state. Wherever I went I beheld injustice, oppres- 
sion, inequality in wealth, social position, moral 
and intellectual culture, — the many everywhere 
toiling for the few. Here is a man well made, 
with vigorous body and active limbs, an intellect 
capable of grappling with the weightiest problems 
of science, and a heart of loving all things which 
are beautiful and good ; and yet is he compelled 
to toil and rack his brains from morning to night, 
in order to gain the bare means of subsistence, 
which shall after all be infinitely inferior to the 
fare of the rich man's dog. Wealth is every- 
where, in practice at least, counted the supreme 



THE REFORMER. 95 

good, and everywhere its producers are the poor 
and wretched. They who toil not, spin not, are 
they who are clad in soft raiment, and fare sump- 
tuously every day. What monstrous injustice 
is here ! 

Here are priests, statesmen, lawyers, all boast- 
ing their services, and pretending to manage soci- 
ety as it ought to be managed. But what do they 
for the mass, the great, unprivileged, hard-handed 
Many ? A rich man is murdered, and the whole 
community rises to ferret out the murderer ; a 
poor man is murdered, leaving a wife and children 
to the tender mercies of a heartless world, and no 
questions are asked. Mothers, pale and emaci- 
ated, watch the live long night over their starving 
little ones ; young women are driven by poverty 
to prostitution ; young men are becoming thieves, 
robbers, murderers, that they may not waste away 
in absolute want, unknown and unhonored. On 
every hand vice and crime, and wailing and wo ; 
and the vice and crime of the poor alone exciting 
horror, and the wailing and wo of the rich alone 
calling forth commiseration. O, it is a bad world. 
Society is all wrong. These iniquitous distinctions 
of class, this injustice, this oppression of the toiling 
many to feed the luxury, and the vanity of the 
idle and worse than useless few, must be redressed. 
But who shall do it ? Not the better sort, for they 
are the better sort only in consequence of their 
existence ; not the poorer sort, for they are igno- 



96 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

rant, and dependent. Yet it must be done ; nay, 
shall be done. Justice shall be introduced and 
man's earthly well-being made possible. But who 
shall do it ? I will do it. I will tell these lords of 
the earth, to their faces, that they are tyrants and 
oppressors, that a day of vengeance is at hand. I 
will tell these wronged, down-trodden masses, that 
they are men, not beasts of burden ; that they 
have as rich a nature as their masters, and as pure 
blood coursing in their veins. I will speak to them 
in the name of justice, of freedom, and my voice 
shall be trumpet-toned. I will wake the dead, and 
make them feel the might that has for ages slum- 
bered in the peasant's arm ; I will bid them stand 
up men, freemen, and swear, in the depths of their 
being, that men they will be, living or dying, and 
that from this time henceforth wrong from man to 
man shall cease, that the earth shall no longer 
echo to the groans of the slave, but resound with 
the songs of liberty, joy, and peace. 

Now I had found a purpose, an end, an aim, — a 
future, and began to live again. No more whim- 
pering, no more sickly sentimentalism ; I was a 
man now, and had a man's work before me. I 
might stand alone against a hostile world, but what 
of that ? I felt I had that within me, which was 
more than a match for all the forces it could mus- 
ter against me ; I carried a whole world within 
me, infinitely superior to the world without me, 
and which should ere long replace it. O, ye, who 



THE REFORMER. 97 

whimper and whine over your petty miseries, go 
forth into the world, behold the wrongs and outra- 
ges to which man subjects his brother, and seek to 
arrest them ; so shall you- forget your own puny 
sorrows, and find the happiness ye sigh for. 

Into the great work of reforming society, or 
rather of reconstructing society, or more accu- 
rately still, of pulling down the society I found 
existing, I now entered with zeal and energy. I 
had now as I have said a future ; nay, I had a 
religion, — a faith and a cultus, of which I was 
the apostle, and felt I could be the martyr. I 
went to the work in right good earnest. I wrote, 
lectured, published, talked, disputed, thought, 
dreamed, until sickness, poverty, and exhaustion 
of mind and energy, caused me to doubt of suc- 
cess, and to pause, and ask myself, if the means 
I used were adequate to the end I contemplated. 

My system was the sensualism of the school of 
Locke. I relied solely on what I termed enlight- 
ened self-interest. I did not doubt but appeals to 
man's interest would be adequate to my wants. I 
knew what I proposed was for the interest of all 
men, and I fancied that all I had to do was to con- 
vince them of this fact. But some how or other 
this was not enough. The truth is, I professed 
one system, but in fact demanded the results of 
another. No reform can be effected without sac- 
rifice, and sacrifice comes not from selfishness. 
I was astonished to find the multitude for whom I 
7 



98 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

was wasting my life, choosing rather to return to 
the flesh-pots of their masters than submit to the 
few inevitable privations of the wilderness which 
lay between them and the promised land. I had 
not then learned that the reformer is powerless 
save as he appeals to men's sense of duty. Show 
the people that they are bound by the eternal 
sanctions of duty to effect your reforms, make 
them feel that the God within commands them, 
and you may count on them to the last, to go with 
you to the battle-field, the dungeon, the scaffold, 
or the cross. But this I learned not till long after- 
wards. 

And then I was a man, and by no means without 
my share of the weakness of human nature. I 
commenced with due spirit and confidence, but I 
gradually began to grow weary of standing ever 
alone ; I grew sick of the combat, and yearned for 
peace and fellowship with my kind. I was never 
intended for a warrior, was never fitted to be a 
reformer. My natural inclinations and tastes were 
for a quiet and retired life passed in the midst of a 
family and a choice circle of friends. In laboring 
for mankind my love for them increased ; and in 
proportion as I became really philanthropic, the 
solitude to which I was doomed became insup- 
portable. I could not bear to feel that in the vast 
multitude around me, not a single heart beat in 
unison with my own. I would love and be loved. 
Not the race only would I love. I wished for 



THE REFORMER. 99 

some one dearer than all to cheer me on to the 
combat, and welcome my return. It was doubtless 
a weakness, but it was a weakness I have never 
been able to get over. The affections have always 
had great power over me, and in fact have always 
done with me pretty much as they would. Could I 
have so generalized my affections as to have cared 
for mankind only in the abstract, and to have had 
no craving for sympathy with individuals, I should 
have been a stronger man, p.erhaps, and might not 
have failed in my undertaking. But this was not 
in my nature. I could never live on abstractions, 
love everybody in general and nobody in particu- 
lar. I was alone. There was no God in heaven, 
to whom I could go for succor ; there was no spot 
on earth to which I could retire for awhile, throw 
off my armor and feel myself secure ; no sympa- 
thizing soul with whom I could talk over my plans, 
give free utterance to the feelings which I must 
ordinarily suppress, and find ample amends for the 
ungenerous scorn of the world. I felt that I was 
wronged, that I was misinterpreted, and that it 
was all in vain to seek to make myself understood. 
My philanthropy turned sour, and, I grieve to say, 
I ended by railing against mankind ; — a no un- 
common case, as I have since learned, with those 
who set out to be world-reformers. Few are the 
old men who have not turned their backs upon 
the dreams of their youth. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE CHRISTIAN. 



While in the condition I have described, — poor, 
sick, despondent, brooding over abortive projects, 
affections soured, hopes disappointed, at war with 
myself and with mankind, — I was visited by a 
Mr. Howard, an elderly gentleman, who resided 
some dozen miles distant, of whom I had often 
heard, but whom I had not before seen. After 
introducing himself, and some general observations 
which interested me in his favor, he invited me to 
accompany him to his residence, assuring me that 
it would afford him and his family great pleasure, 
if I would consent to make his home mine for a 
longer or shorter time, as might suit my conve- 
nience. This invitation, which seemed prompted 
by really generous sentiment, I was in no condi- 
tion to think lightly of. I accepted it very grate- 
fully ; and as I had not many arrangements to 
make, I was soon ready, and, taking a seat with 
Mr. Howard in his carriage, we departed. 

This Mr. Howard, at the time I speak of, was 
no every-day character. Endowed by nature with 



THE CHRISTIAN. 101 

a warm heart, a clear and discriminating mind, he 
had spared no pains in cultivating his natural advan- 
tages. He was well acquainted with history, 
familiar with all the general literature of the day, 
and what was better than all, he had mingled in 
the world, had seen men in all conditions and under 
nearly all aspects, and that too without losing his 
love for them, or his strong desire to serve them. 
He had been absent in Europe for some time, or 
it is possible that he had interested himself in my 
movements much earlier. On his return home, he 
had been informed by his family, that there was a 
man making some noise in the neighboring city, 
about a radical change in society, who was labor- 
ing to introduce a state of absolute social equality ; 
but, they added, it is said he is an atheist, and a 
very dangerous man in the community. Mr. How- 
ard also heard of me from other quarters, and 
heard too that I seemed to be sincere, that I had 
made some sacrifices for what I held to be the 
cause of humanity, and that I was now in ill-health, 
and most likely destitute of the common comforts 
of life, if not even its necessaries. This was 
enough. " That man of whom you speak," said 
he, "if what you tell me be correct, is no atheist, 
God is love, and no man who sincerely loves his 
brother can be a disbeliever in God. I will see 
him, and thank him in the name of religion, for 
his efforts at social reform ; for if I do not mistake 
his character, he has much more of Christianity 



102 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

than have the great mass of the professed followers 
of Jesus." He was as good as his word, and had 
now called on me as I have related, and invited 
me to his home. 

" Mr. Eiwood," said he, as the carriage drove 
off, " I have been much interested in what I have 
heard respecting your efforts in the cause of social 
melioration. I have just returned from the Old 
World. I have seen its most favored countries, 
have spent considerable time in examining the rich 
monuments of its genius, arts and industry ; but 
everywhere, amidst the much which I have heartily 
approved, and wished to see my countrymen study- 
ing to imitate, I have been pained to witness the 
depressed condition of the great mass of the 
people. The favored few may be enlightened, 
cultivated, refined ; but the many are almost uni- 
formly ignorant, half-brutish, and shut out of from 
nearly all the advantages society was instituted by 
the Creator to secure to its members. The splen- 
did palaces rise side by side with the wretched 
hovels of the poor. They may be filled with every 
luxury for every sense, wrung from the toil and 
sweat of the mass ; but their occupants, notwith- 
standing their intelligence, refinement and hospi- 
tality, seem never to have dreamed that the many- 
were not made for the express purpose of minis- 
tering to their pleasure ; and on their benighted 
minds dawns never the great doctrine of the com- 
mon brotherhood of the race. I sometimes lost 



THE CHRISTIAN. 103 

my patience. I told a judge one day that I would 
rather take my chance at the last day, with those 
he would hang than with himself. They were 
victims of an order of things they had not created, 
and could not control ; of which he was one of 
the feed upholders. Instead of using the talents 
and means of influence God had entrusted to him, 
for the melioration of that order, he exerted them 
merely to crush whomsoever should dare disclose 
its defects or seek to remedy them. 

" I have now returned home, and here, I am 
sorry to say, I find the germs of the same order, 
the same principles and tendencies at work, and 
if resulting as yet in evils of less magnitude, it is 
owing to certain accidental causes, every day be- 
coming less and less active. The lines of distinc- 
tion between the great mass of the people and the 
favored few, are every day becoming broader and 
more indelible. Labor is held in less esteem than 
it was, and is not so well rewarded. Wages, 
perhaps, are nominally higher, the laboring man 
may consume more and richer articles of food 
and clothing ; but if I am not greatly mistaken, 
he finds it more than proportionally more difficult 
to maintain his former relative standing. Poverty 
keeps pace with wealth, and not unfrequently 
outruns it. Poor men may indeed become rich, 
and rich men poor ; but the rich and the poor still 
remain ; the perpetual shifting of individuals leaves 
the classes as they were, neither lessening their 



104 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

numbers nor diminishing their evil consequences. 
The evil does not consist in the fact that these in- 
dividuals rather than those, constitute the rich or 
the poor, but in the fact that there are both rich 
and poor. 

" I should pay little regard to this inequality in 
wealth, were its results confined to the mere 
physical well-being or suffering of the members of 
society. I am mainly affected by its moral results, 
and those are disastrous. On the one hand, the 
rich become vain, arrogant, forgetful of their re- 
sponsibilities, and duties, and of course immoral. 
For he, in the strongest sense of the word, is im- 
moral, who neglects his duties to society, or fails 
to vindicate to the full extent of his ability, the 
rights and the well-being of the many, however 
amiable he may be in his private relations, polished 
in his manners, or respectable in the eyes of the 
world. On the other hand, the poor become dis- 
contented, uneasy, and discouraged ; — lose all 
self-respect, all self-confidence, moulder earth- 
ward, and live and die but a single step above 
the brutes. O ! sir, the magnitude of the evil is 
immense, and from the bottom of my heart, I 
thank you for calling public attention to it, and for 
laboring to remove it."" 

" You are the first man, Mr. Howard," I replied, 
"who has ever addressed me in this style, — the 
first who has not either condemned me outright, or 
exhorted me to be prudent, and not say aught to 
alarm the weak and timid. With a few such 



THE CHRISTIAN. 105 

friends to the people as you appear to be, I had 
not failed in my undertaking, and in the bitterness 
of disappointment exclaimed with the Spanish 
Proverb, ' Mankind is an ass — kicks him who 
attempts to take off his panniers. 5 But, sir, while 
your language touches me sensibly, it also sur- 
prises me not a little. I have always understood 
that you were rich and a Christian." 

" And what is there in that to surprise you ?" 
" Every rich man I have hitherto met has cried 
out against me, called me an agrarian, a jacobin, 
a leveler, and sounded the alarm, c property is in 
danger.' And Christians have been my most 
bitter and uncompromising enemies. They have 
always met me with the assurance that these 
social inequalities and distinctions I deplore and 
would remove, are of Divine appointment, the ex- 
press will of God, and that it is therefore impious 
as well as foolish to war against them." 

" There may be some truth in what you say, 
but I trust and believe you exaggerate. The rich 
men of whom you complain, are not so properly 
termed rich men as business men, men who are 
not rich but are seeking to be, — men who occupy 
a position they would not, and who know not how 
to attain to the rank, influence and consideration 
they crave, but by using their fellow beings. They 
would be richer than they are, but they can be 
only by availing themselves adroitly, not to say 
dishonestly, of the labors of others. Labor is 



106 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

profitable to the buyer in proportion to its cheap- 
ness, and, like everything else, its cheapness de- 
pends on the supply in the market. It is therefore, 
as they view the matter, for their interest to keep 
the supply as large as possible. This supply can 
be large only on the condition that there be a 
large number of individuals who are solely de- 
pendent on the sale of their labor for their means 
of subsistence. Your efforts, had they succeeded, 
would have increased the number of independent 
proprietors, and diminished the number of mere 
laborers ; consequently the supply of labor which 
should be for sale, and consequently, again, would 
have enhanced its price, and therefore lessened 
the profits of its purchasers. Hence the opposi- 
tion you have encountered from the business part 
of the community. But there are rich men who 
are truly enlightened, who feel that they hold their 
riches as a trust from Heaven to be employed not 
for their own private advantage, but in the sacred 
cause of humanity, in diffusing universally truth, 
justice and love. These men are not your ene- 
mies, but your real friends, who take the deepest 
interest in your movements, and who are the first 
to espouse your cause and will be the last to desert 
it. The number of these individuals is every day 
increasing, and I could point you to not a few who 
would willingly impoverish themselves, if they 
could see that by so doing they would contribute 
to the moral and social elevation of the people." 



THE CHRISTIAN. 107 

" But how do you reconcile your democratic 
doctrines with your Christianity ? It is difficult 
for me to conceive how it is possible that a true 
Christian, so far forth as he is Christian, should 
labor for the social regeneration of mankind." 

" I owe my Christian friends no apology for my 
democratic sentiments. It is as a Christian that I 
take a deep and abiding interest in the well-being 
of my race, that I labor to elevate, morally, intel- 
lectually and physically, the poorest and most nu- 
merous class ; and I were no Christian, if I did 
not. Christianity is the poor man's religion." 

" So I have heard the clergy say ; but why they 
say so, I know not, unless it be because Christi- 
anity keeps the multitude star-gazing, so that the 
rich and the great may enjoy the fruits of the 
earth unobserved. It may be that it is the poor 
man's religion, because it enjoins upon him sub- 
mission to a state of things, of which he is the vic- 
tim, and cries out c Order, Order,' whenever the 
people take it into their heads to better their con- 
dition ; and because it leagues with the despot and 
furnishes the warrant of the Almighty to sanction 
his despotism." 

" I have," replied Mr. Howard, " a profound 
respect for the clergy, and am grateful to them 
for the much they have done, directly or indirectly, 
to advance the civilization of mankind ; but I have 
yet to learn that they are infallible. They are in 
fact the creatures as well as the creators of their 



108 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

times. I do not, because I cannot honestly, join 
in the usual declamation against them. The 
charges generally preferred against them belong 
to the circumstances in which they are placed, 
rather than to themselves. It is given only to 
here and there a man among the clergy as well as 
the rest of mankind to stand out from his own age, 
the prophet and the representative of the future. 
The clergy may have had learning, but in general 
they have not been deeply versed in human nature. 
They are unfavorably situated, especially in our 
times. When they visit, they find the house 
swept and garnished ; the child has on its best bib 
and tucker, and every one is clad in his Sunday suit. 
The best side is out. The real state of things is 
not seen. The clergy too have depended on books 
rather than on observation ; and very different 
are the men and women of books from the men 
and women who actually live and breathe and 
move in the world round and about us. They 
have also inquired much oftener and altogether 
more earnestly, what is orthodox, than what is 
true ; what will the church approve, than what she 
ought to approve, and consequently have had little 
time to bestow upon things as they really are. 

• - As a body the clergy have never compre- 
hended, have never been capable of comprehend- 
ing the real character of Christianity. Nothing 
is more unlike the real conception of Jesus than 
what you and the majority of the Christian world 



THE CHRISTIAN. 109 

call the Christian religion. What you call the 
religion of Jesus may contain some of the ele- 
ments of Christianity, for it were not possible for 
the human race to overlook them all ; but Chris- 
tianity itself, as it existed in the mind of its author, 
is yet to be revealed. 

" I am a Christian, but I am a Christian in my 
own way, and on my own hook. I learn of Jesus. 
I have as good a right to interpret him as any one 
else has ; and if I interpret him aright, most others 
do not. The age in which he lived did not com- 
prehend him, for some would have made him a 
king, and others crucified him between two thieves. 
His immediate disciples did not comprehend him, 
as may be collected from his reproofs, their con- 
fessions, disputes and changes of opinion. Their 
disciples, further removed still, it is reasonable to 
suppose comprehended him still less. 

u What now passes for Christianity is Catholi- 
cism. Protestantism, so far forth as it is protest- 
antism, is not a religion, and the religion we find 
connected with it in the minds and hearts of 
protestants, is merely what has been retained of 
Catholicism. Religion affirms ; it never does, never 
can protest. Catholicism succeeded to Judaism on 
the one hand, and paganism, as modified by the 
Alexandrians, on the other. It was a compound 
of both, immeasurably their superior, but immeas- 
urably below the conception of Jesus. It bor- 
rowed indeed many terms from the Nazarene 



110 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

Reformer ; but in most cases it interpreted them 
by the ideas and associations of the old religions. 
I have a profound respect for the catholic church, 
and very little sympathy with what protestants say 
against it. If protestantism did not mark a tran- 
sition to something better, I should arrange myself 
with the catholics rather than with protestants. 
The catholic church had an important mission, 
that of civilizing the barbarian hordes which sup- 
planted the Roman empire, of introducing a new 
order of civilization, and preparing the way for 
the second coming of our Lord ; that is, for the 
introduction and establishment of a religious in- 
stitution, Christian in reality as well as in name. 
Viewed in relation to this end, regarded merely 
as a provisional institution, which should in turn 
give way to a more perfect, as the Jewish had 
given way to it, I have no fault to find with 
Catholicism, but am willing to recognise it as a 
true church. But at the epoch of the Reforma- 
tion it had finished its work, fulfilled its mission, 
and since then it has been a mere cumberer of the 
ground. The three hundred years which have 
passed away since Luther, have been merely ages 
of doubt, criticism, inquiry, destruction, efforts to 
get rid of a superannuated institution and to elab- 
orate a new one. Of this no wise man complains, 
for it has been inevitable. But the new institution 
is not yet found, nor has any one of the numerous 
sects now extant, its nucleus even. But I am 



THE CHRISTIAN. Ill 

wandering from my point. Catholicism, excepting 
an impulse towards spirituality, which it received 
from Jesus, was in fact little else than a modifica- 
tion of the religions which preceded it. This is 
well known to some of your infidel writers, and 
is frequently urged as an objection to the truth of 
Christianity. It may be an objection to what has 
passed for Christianity, but it is no objection to 
that divine system of moral and religious truth 
which lay in the mind of Jesus. 

" I mean not to say that what has passed for 
Christianity has had no truth, nor indeed that it 
has contained no Christian truth. What I mean is, 
that the church has not been constructed after the 
Christian model. The truths borrowed from Jesus 
have not served as its foundation, but as the deco- 
rations of its altar, or have merely entered as pol- 
ished stones and been lost in its walls. The idea 
realized has not been the Christian idea ; but in 
the main the Jewish idea. This has been the fun- 
damental error of the church. The Christian 
world has not found its life and unity in the cen- 
tral idea of Christianity, although it may have re- 
cognised that idea, and insisted on it with much 
sincerity and force. 

" Jesus said, 6 My kingdom is not of this world,' 
and it has been thence inferred that he regarded 
this life only in its connexion with another, and 
had no desire to promote its well-being save as a 
means of securing the happiness of the life to 



112 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

come. He therefore had no desire to favor social 
progress as such, and never sought man's earthly 
well-being as an end. In consequence of this mis- 
interpretation of the words of Jesus, the social ele- 
ment of human nature, has never received the 
attention from the church it deserved. Under- 
standing Jesus as concerning himself exclusively 
with the salvation of the soul in the world after 
death, and promulgating his religion on earth 
solely to secure that end, the church has contemned 
this world, pronounced it a vale of tears, a 
wretched land, and commanded us to look for 
happiness neither from it nor in it. The great 
office of religion has not been to teach us to live, 
but to die, — not to create a heaven on earth, 
but to enable us to endure suffering. There is 
nothing true but heaven. All here is mere illu- 
sion, unworthy a wish or a thought. All human 
pursuits are vain ; earth is cursed for man's sake ; 
and thistles and brambles only shall it bring forth 
to his labor. Seek merely to gain admittance 
into heaven. Heaven is the home of the soul. 
There all our toils will be over. There no more 
pain, no more fatigue, no more sickness, no more 
sorrow ; but all one clear, unclouded noon of un- 
utterable bliss. No matter what are the sufferings 
of this short and transitory life, they are not 
worthy to be compared with the exceeding weight 
of glory which awaits us in the life to come. 
" In all this there is a truth, a great truth, but 



THE CHRISTIAN. 113 

not the whole truth. This life is not and cannot 
be exempt from suffering, and far be it from me 
to think lightly of the religion which seeks to make 
us patient under suffering, and which consoles us 
for present sorrows with the hope of joys to come. 
We all need consolations, a friendly hand to wipe 
the tears from our eyes, and to pour oil and wine 
into our wounded hearts. But then this world is 
God's world and is not to be contemned, and this 
life is God's gift and should therefore count for 
something, — cannot be mere illusion all. It is 
easy to account for the view which the church has 
taken of this world. The church grew up amid 
a dissolving world, when nothing seemed settled, 
when the earth seemed abandoned by its Maker, 
to the Devil and his angels. But the effects of this 
view have been none the less disastrous, because 
we are able to account for it. These effects have 
been to sink below its natural level the social ele- 
ment of Christianity, to make the devout think 
meanly of whatever pertains to this mode of being, 
and to produce the conviction that the melioration 
of society as such is unnecessary if not even sin- 
ful. In this view of the office of religion, you see 
why it is that the church through all the stages of 
its existence has never labored directly for the 
progress of man's earthly well-being. It has 
indeed given alms and founded hospitals and asy- 
lums, for it has been charitable ; it has sent out its 
missionaries to evangelize the world, for it has 
8 



114 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

been zealous, and filled with the spirit of propa- 
gandism ; but it has sent out these missionaries 
expressly for the purpose of saving the soul here- 
after, never for the purpose of diffusing the arts 
and blessings of civilization, albeit these have 
often followed. 

" In all this I own the church has had a truth, a 
great truth, — perhaps the only truth past ages 
were able to appreciate, — but, as the church has 
interpreted it, by no means a peculiarly Christian 
truth, nor the truth demanded by the present. 
Christianity recognises the universal belief of 
mankind in a future' life ; it assumes always an 
hereafter ; but it never makes it the principal ob- 
ject of man's life here to secure to his soul admis- 
sion into heaven after death. It teaches us to 
prize the soul above the body ; to seek the salva- 
tion of the soul ; but not in the sense in which the 
church has alleged. Jesus would save the soul, 
not from future burnings, but from ignorance, low 
wants, grovelling propensities — in a word, from 
sinning. When he said his kingdom was not of 
this world, he spoke in reference to the world in 
which he appeared, and asserted that his kingdom, 
the order of things he came to introduce and 
everywhere build up, was to be based on other 
principles than were the kingdoms then existing. 
These kingdoms were established on the principle 
that might gives right ; or at best on the idea of 
justice, as distinct from that of love. Their maxim 



THE CHRISTIAN. 115 

was, c an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, love 
to one's neighbor, but hatred to enemies,' — a 
maxim which at best could only create an eternal 
circle of injuries. But the kingdom of Jesus was 
to be based on the broad principle of absolute 
right, of universal philanthropy, a love for man- 
kind, even for enemies, strong enough, if need be, 
to die for them on the scaffold or the cross. Those 
kingdoms were supported by the sword ; his king- 
dom required the sword to remain in its scabbard, 
and commanded its subjects not to slay their ene- 
mies but to die for them. Jesus came to intro- 
duce a kingdom, a spiritual kingdom, — not an 
ecclesiastical kingdom, — a kingdom of righteous- 
ness, peace and love ; to establish the reign of a . 
new and a higher morality ; but it was on the 
earth he sought to establish it. It was this world, 
the affairs, the minds and the hearts of men in 
this mode of being, he sought to subject to the law 
of God which is the law of right, which is again, 
the law of love. Hence the angels sang not only 
; Glory to God in the highest,' but ' on earth 
peace and good will to men.' 

" This great fact has been overlooked or mis- 
interpreted ; and yet it was of this fact that the 
wise and good of old prophesied. They saw the 
vice, the crime, the poverty, the suffering, the big- 
otry, the idolatry, the superstition, with which their 
own age was cursed, and they looked forth into the 
dim and distant future for a new order, a new age, 



116 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

a new world to spring into birth. They saw in the 
visions of their souls, in the inspirations of their 
hopes, an individual, a chosen messenger, a proph- 
et, priest, king, or hero, the anointed of God, the 
Messiah, by whom, in due time, this new order 
should be introduced, and the latter-day glory, for 
which they yearned and hoped, and must die with- 
out witnessing, should be realized. The utterance 
of their hopes and their wishes and their present- 
iments, in the sublime strains of inspired poetry, 
is what the church reverences, and rightly rever- 
ences as prophecy, and the authority of which, 
with equal justice, it has always asserted. These 
prophecies of a long line of patriarchs and sages, 
all point to the new world Jesus came to create, to 
the establishment of the reign of justice and love 
throughout all the earth. And I, for one, believe 
that they were from God and shall be realized. 
These patriarchs and sages read in the stars, which 
ever and anon broke through the clouds which 
obscured their heavens, that the night should not 
last forever, that a glorious morning should dawn, 
a golden sun uprise, before whose beams the dark- 
ness should roll back, and the clouds disperse. To 
me Jesus is that sun. His light has been rising 
for ages on our world, struggling with the darkness, 
and I doubt not that he will, ere long, shine forth 
in all his glory, the whole earth be illumined, and 
man everywhere be able to stand up in his true 
dignity, the brother of man, and the child of God. 



THE CHRISTIAN. 117 

This is the purport of all prophecy ; and this real- 
ized, is the establishment of universal right, and 
the establishment of this, is the realization of the 
highest social perfection, as well as individual 
holiness. 

" Man has suffered long ; for ages been alien- 
ated from his brother man, the prey of false notions 
and anti-social habits. Long has he gone about 
bent to the earth, pale and haggard, bemoaning 
his existence, and at times, in the bitterness of his 
soul, cursing his Maker. Christianity comes to his 
relief. It brings a remedy ; not merely by enjoin- 
ing submission, patience, resignation ; but by recog- 
nising his right to a better condition, and breathing 
into his soul, the courage which dare attempt 
its realization. Christianity, sir, deals with man's 
rights as well as with his duties. Nay, rightly 
interpreted, it concerns itself even more with our 
rights than with our duties, for even the duties it 
enjoins are but another name for the rights it 
recognises. It begins by recognising all men as 
brethren, — ' one is your Father in heaven and all 
ye are brethren,' — it proceeds by enjoining uni- 
versal philanthropy, legitimated by the fact of the 
common brotherhood of the race ; and ends by 
commanding us to labor especially for the poor, 
the friendless, the down-trodden. Jesus claimed 
to be the anointed of God, because he was anoint- 
ed to preach glad tidings to the poor. His minis- 
try began with the poor, the lower classes ; they 



118 CHARLES ELWO D . 

heard him gladly, while the rich scorned, and 
the great took counsel against him ; from them 
were taken his chosen ministers, not learned scribes 
and rabbis, but poor unlettered fishermen, and 
humble tent-makers, — men who had nothing but 
their simple humanity, and therefore could be sat- 
isfied with nothing short of those broad and eternal 
principles of right, which extend alike to all the 
members of the race. The principles of the Gos- 
pel were broad enough to reach even them. There- 
fore 6 blessed are the poor, for. theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven,' — is, not merely shall be in another 
world, but is now, for it is for their especial benefit 
the Son of God has come to introduce the reign 
of righteousness and love. 

" You see now, Mr. Elwood, I hope, why it is I 
call Christianity the poor man's religion. It is not 
because it comes with the voice of God to make 
him submissive to his masters ; not because it seeks 
to reconcile him to an order of things, the whole 
weight of wrri©h he must bear ; but because it 
comes to reveal to him his rights, his own lofty 
and deathless nature ; his equality with those who 
have for ages trampled him in the dust, fattened on 
his sweat and blood ; and to assure him that he 
also is a man, and has a man's wants, a man's 
rights, and energies ; because it says to his op- 
pressor in the tone and authority of God, Hold, 
thou wrongest a brother, and blasphemest thy 
Maker by oppressing his child ; because it says to 



THE CHRISTIAN. 119 

the rich, the proud, the would-be nobility of earthy 
in the meanest, the lowest, the most filthy of the 
human race, Behold an equal, a brother, a child 
of God, humanity in all its integrity, with all its 
imprescriptible rights, and its capacity of endless 
progress in truth, love, goodness. Here, sir, is what 
I see in Christianity, and seeing this, I could not 
be a Christian did I not recognise the rights of the 
poor, and feel my obligations to them ; I could not 
for one moment find peace in my own bosom, did 
I not make the moral and social melioration of all 
the members of the community, the express object 
of all my thoughts, wishes, and labors. I hope, 
sir, you svill no longer feel surprised to find a pro- 
fessed Christian sympathizing with efforts designed 
to promote man's earthly weal." 

" You have presented me the Gospel," I re- 
plied, " in a new light ; and had I seen it in the 
same light some years ago, it would have, perhaps, 
saved me some trouble, and reconciled me to the 
Christian faith. But what signifies it ? You call 
yourself a Christian, but the whole Christian 
world will call you an infidel, and were you not 
rich would condemn you as loudly as it does me." 

" Well, what of that ? The first Christians were 
called atheists, and Jesus himself was crucified as 
a blasphemer, and I trust that I shall not be fright- 
ened by a nickname. The truth never yet was 
extinguished by a nickname, and if I have the 
truth, the world may call me what it will. But 



120 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

there is no fear that my views will be termed in- 
fidelity. I have not stated my views only. Millions 
of hearts are there already to respond to them, 
and millions of voices ere long shall echo them. 
The Christian world is prepared for these views, 
and daily in the temple is it praying for them. 
Everywhere is there a Simeon to whose heart it 
has been revealed that he shall see the Lord's 
anointed, ready on beholding the Gospel in the 
light I have presented it, to exclaim, 'Lord, now 
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
eyes have seen thy salvation.' " 

We had now reached Mr. Howard's residence 
and the conversation dropped. 



CHAPTER XV. 



CONVALESCENCE. 



Of Mr. Howard's family I shall not say much. 
It consisted of a wife and two daughters ; the 
eldest daughter was eighteen, the other some two 
years younger, both intelligent, beautiful and reli- 
gious, according to their father's reading of the 
Gospel. It was a quiet family, and in more 
respects than one, just the family in which the 
bruised spirit might be made whole, the chilled 
affections recover their warmth, and the troubled 
heart find its peace. 

This family was cheerful, nay, lively ; and 
the girls were now and then, as girls will be, a 
little frolicsome in a quiet way ; but never, as I 
could discover, disposed to waste their time on 
trifles. Each had a regular employment, and 
each seemed to feel that life had serious aims 
which must not be lost sight of, and solemn duties 
which must not be neglected. Whether it was a 
fashionable or unfashionable family I cannot say, 
not being a judge of such matters. It was a 
wealthy family ; but I never saw any display of 



122 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

wealth. The house, furniture, and dress of the 
ladies, all seemed to me chaste, simple, and in 
good taste. Nothing was said about high and 
low ; for the family did not belong to the class of 
noveaux riches ; and the poor were never alluded 
to unless it were to have their rights explained and 
enforced, or their wants relieved. Mr. Howard, 
however, was no great advocate of almsgiving. 
In former times, he would say, when mere tempo- 
rary relief was all that the most sanguine friends 
of mankind could hope to effect, almsgiving was a 
duty, and a virtue ; but now we should aim at 
something higher, something which not merely 
palliates, but cures. Almsgiving is now often but 
a respectable way the rich have of displaying their 
wealth, or of excusing themselves from all serious 
efforts in behalf of the poor and needy. He 
wished not merely to relieve for a moment the 
wants of a few individuals, but to cure poverty 
itself, to abolish the distinction of rich and poor, 
believing with Agur, that neither riches nor pov- 
erty is best for man. But he did not seek to effect 
this object by giving to the poor, nor by seeking 
to do everything for them. The poor, he con- 
tended, were not poor because the rich wanted 
generosity, but justice. Nothing was needed for 
the poor but a simple reverence for the rights and 
dignity of man, as man. The great inequality in 
wealth which obtains results from the want of 
strict honesty in its acquisition, from the undue 



CONVALESCENCE. 123 

advantages which individuals by their adroitness, 
or suppleness, and want of conscientiousness, have 
been able to secure to themselves, and from the 
want of high, moral feelings and a manly inde- 
pendence of spirit on the part of the poor. If 
every man would take with him, on commencing 
the pursuit of wealth, not conventional but true 
Christian morality, there would never be any in- 
equality in w T ealth to be complained of ; and con- 
sequently no poor to be commiserated, and no 
occasion for the display of generosity on the part 
of the rich. He did not ask the rich to give to 
the poor, but to respect the rights of the poor. 
For himself, he was rich ; he had inherited the 
greater part of his wealth, and although he might 
question the strict morality of some of the means 
by which his estate had been originally acquired, 
he did not think it incumbent on him to throw it 
away ; but to preserve it, and use it according to 
the best of his judgment for the moral, intellect- 
ual and physical improvement of the community 
in which his lot had been cast. 

I soon found myself quite domesticated in this 
agreeable family. I was not overloaded with 
kindness. I was in very feeble health, but no one 
tried to make me believe my health was feebler 
than it was. I had been unfortunate, but I heard 
no allusion to the fact, and no one attempted to 
console me. I was an infidel, but my unbelief 
elicited no remark, — was I not also a man ? 



124 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

Books, music, conversation, walks in the garden, 
short excursions to view some fine natural scenery 
in the neighborhood, afforded me ample means to 
recover my health and recruit my spirits. 

Several weeks glided away uncounted, and I 
was evidently growing better. The world began 
to wear now and then a little sunshine, and to look 
less and less coldly upon me. Bright and laugh- 
ing eyes were shining around me, but all the light 
did not come from them ; — I had somewhat to 
remember. I was an inmate for the first time in 
my life in a family where I could see religion 
without bigotry, zeal without fanaticism, warmth 
of piety without superstition. I was surrounded 
by holy influences. The temper of my mind was 
rapidly changing, and old half-forgotten feelings 
would come up, and at times I felt as I did in that 
distant past when all things were bright and lovely 
to my view. Somehow or other the world did 
not seem to me so desolate as it did, and I could 
hardly persuade myself that some good being had 
not made it. Whence this disposition to return to 
my early faith ? this new disposition to believe 
and worship ? I had been honest, philanthropic ; 
I had aimed well, I had inquired diligently, but 
might I not, after all, have mistaken my way ? 
A new doubt this, not a doubt that leads to incre- 
dulity, but which may perhaps lead to something 
else. 

There is nothing, I suppose, singular or novel 



CONVALESCENCE. 125 

in this. There may be intellectual beings, who 
are moved by thought alone, — beings who never 
feel, but live always in mere abstractions. Such 
persons are dependent never on the state of the 
affections, and are influenced not at all by the cir- 
cumstances around them. Of these beings I know 
not much. I am not one of them. I have be- 
lieved myself to have a heart as w T ell as a head, 
and that in me, what the authors of a new science 
I have just heard of, call the affective nature, is 
stronger, by several degrees, than the intellectual. 
The fact is my feelings have generally controlled 
my belief, not my belief my feelings. This is no 
uncommon case. As a general rule would you 
gain the reason you must first win the heart. This 
is the secret of most conversions. There is no 
logic like love. And by-the-by, I believe that 
the heart is not only often stronger than the head, 
but in general a safer guide to truth. At any 
rate, I have never found it difficult to assign plenty 
of good reasons for doing what my heart has 
prompted me to do. Mr. Howard understood all 
this perfectly, and uniformly practised on the prin- 
ciple here implied, not as a calculation, but be- 
cause he was led to it by the benevolence of his 
own heart. He found me out of humor with 
myself and the world, suffering acute mental tor- 
ture, and he saw at once that I must be reconciled 
to myself and the world, before I could look upon 
Christianity in the proper frame of mind to judge 



126 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

of its truth and beauty. Then again he was not 
extremely anxious to convert me. He did not 
regard me in my present condition as an alien 
from God, or as deserving to be an outcast from 
man. To him I was a man, a brother, a child of 
God. If I had been unable to come to the same 
belief he had, it might be my loss, but could not 
be my fault. He would gladly see me a believer, 
but he thought probably the influence of Christian 
example, and above all, communion with truly 
Christian dispositions, would go farther than any 
arguments addressed merely to my understanding 
towards making me one. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



A PARADOX. 



As I began to recover the tone of my mind, and 
to look with a less jaundiced eye upon the world, 
my infidelity became a frequent subject of conver- 
sation. One evening, while we were conversing, 
I remarked to Mr. Howaid, that since I had been 
in his family, I had been almost persuaded to be- 
come a Christian. 

" Perhaps," he replied, " you are, and always 
have been, much nearer being a Christian than you 
imagine. " 

" But I can hardly be a Christian without know- 
ing it." 

" I am not so sure of that. Christianity is not 
a creed, but a life. He who has the spirit of Jesus 
is a Christian, be his speculative belief what it 
may." 

" I have not as yet advanced far enough to admit 
even the existence of a God. I see not then how 
I can have much of Christ in me." 

" Christ is not a dogma to be believed, but a 
spirit to be cultivated and obeyed. Whoever loves 



128 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

truth and goodness, and is willing to die for their 
honor and the redemption of man, as Jesus did, I 
hold to he a Christian in the only worthy sense of 
the term. He may not indeed have the 'letter' 
which ' killeth,' but that is no great loss, so long 
as he has the ' spirit ' which ' giveth life.' " 

" You seem determined to make me out a 
Christian, and that too without changing my faith." 
" The belief in Christ lies in the bottom of 
every honest man's heart. Christianity is nothing 
foreign to our soul. It is the ideal, the realization 
of which would constitute, the perfection of our 
nature. Just so far as you advance in the work 
of perfecting your own nature, do you grow in 
Christ ; and could you attain to the highest perfec- 
tion admitted by your nature as a man, you would 
attain to the stature of a perfect man in Christ 
Jesus. In yielding obedience to the moral laws of 
your own being, you are yielding obedience to the 
Gospel. One of these laws, the one which I term 
the social element of human nature, you obeyed in 
your efforts to reform society and augment the 
sum of the common weal of your kind. Conse- 
quently in obeying this element, you were con- 
forming to the Christian law. You fancied you 
were obeying a law of infidelity, but that was an 
error of judgment, easily accounted for. You saw 
that element generally overlooked or discarded by 
the Christian world ; you therefore inferred that it 
could not be an element of Christianity ; and you 



A PARADOX. 129 

rejected Christianity because you supposed it re- 
jected this element. But had you seen that Chris- 
tianity recognised this element as its great, its 
central law, you would not have thought of reject- 
ing it." 

" But I was an unbeliever long before I ever 
dreamed of turning social reformer." 

" Very possibly ; but still for a Christian reason. 
All the infidelity I have ever met with springs from 
one of two causes acting separately, or from both 
combined. The first cause of infidelity I have 
already spoken of. Some men feel a strong desire 
to redress social or political grievances, and are 
repulsed by the church. They therefore imagine 
the church opposed to political freedom, and social 
progress ; and identifying Christianity with the 
church, they disown it, and very properly. The 
second cause of infidelity is found in the develop- 
ment of the philosophical element of our nature. 
This element is strong in some men. They must 
be free to inquire what and wherefore they believe. 
This inquiry the church has prohibited ; they have 
therefore concluded it prohibited by Christianity 
itself ; and therefore have rejected Christianity ; 
and I add again, very properly. In both of these 
cases the supposed rejection of Christianity has been 
induced by Christian motives ; and the infidel could 
not have been, with his lights, a Christian, had he 
done differently." 

9 



130 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

" You seem, sir, disposed to attribute infidelity 
to good causes and not to bad." 

" Certainly. I have long since learned to hold 
myself ignorant of the real causes of a man's 
opinions, till I have been able to trace them to a 
good, even a sacred source. Infidelity indicates 
an inquiring mind, an honest mind, not a depraved 
heart. It originates in what is good in the indivi- 
dual, and is disgraceful only to the .church which 
has given occasion for it. Instead then of censur- 
ing infidels, denouncing them in the name of God, 
and trying to set the community against them, I 
look into the church to ascertain, if I can, its errors 
or defects which justify infidelity. Christians, not 
infidels, are to be denounced if any are." 

" But, sir, will the church suffer you to make 
such assertions ? Will it not denounce you as 
well as me ? M 

" I am not much in the habit of asking permis- 
sion of the church to say this or that, and if it 
choose to denounce me, all I have to say is, I will 
denounce it ; and I am sure it will regard my de- 
nunciation of it, as much as I shall its denunciation 
of me." 

" Every man who believes Christianity and 
knows why he believes it, has at some period of 
his life doubted it. Authority and tradition may 
answer the wants of the multitude, but there are 
those who must not only know what they believe, 
but wherefore they believe. In these men the 



A PARADOX. 131 

philosophical element is active. They ask, why 
do we believe Christianity ? What are the grounds 
for believing it ? When they ask this question, 
they have no thought of doubting, far less of dis- 
believing. They are honest, but they have a 
craving to comprehend that faith they have hith- 
erto taken on trust. But when they begin this 
questioning they are necessarily ignorant, and 
doubt is the inevitable result. 

" Doubt, although in itself free from sin, is a 
critical matter. 1 am far from pretending that we 
may doubt without danger. There is always dan- 
ger in cutting loose from our old fastenings, and 
going forth upon an unknown sea, while as yet 
unskilled in navigation. There is always danger, 
that when we doubt the truth of the creed in which 
we have been reared, we shall make our doubt an 
excuse for disregarding all moral restraints, and 
for the indulgence of all our baser propensities ; 
there is also danger that we shall be too hasty, and 
rush too precipitately from mere doubt to dogmatic 
infidelity ; nevertheless, the hazard here implied 
we must run, unless we would be forever in leading- 
strings. 

" Doubt itself has no necessary connexion with 
infidelity, or the rejection of Christianity. We 
can never attain to a rational faith in Christianity 
without passing through the wilderness of doubt ; 
but the natural result of doubt would be convic- 
tion, not disbelief; that is, where it runs a free 



132 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

course. But unhappily it is not suffered to run 
this free course. It is almost always obstructed. 
Nearly the whole Christian world condemns it, 
pronounces it a sin, the effect of a depraved heart 
or a lawless will, — unchurches, anathematizes the 
trembling doubter, and assures him, that if he con- 
tinues to doubt he shall be damned not only here 
but hereafter. 

" From this fact results one of two conse- 
quences. If the want to account to oneself for 
his faith, and to see clearly the grounds of its 
truth, be but moderate, the doubter stifles his 
doubts, sinks back under the dominion of authority 
and tradition, assents to whatever the church 
enjoins, and remains henceforth destitute of all 
real spiritual life, a dead weight on the cause of 
Christ, and a disgrace to humanity. Such, I fear, 
are at the present moment, a majority of the mem- 
bers of our churches. These are they who are 
loudest against the inridel, and the most ready to 
anathematize all freedom of mind. Poor crea- 
tures ! having no reason themselves to give for 
the faith they avow, they fancy none can be 
given. On the other hand, if the want of which I 
speak be very urgent, that is, if the philosophical 
element of our nature be very strong and active, 
the obstacles which our doubts encounter, enrage 
us, make us mad at the church for its unreasona- 
bleness, and drive us into infidelity. I think your 
own experience will bear me out in what I say. 



A PARADOX. 133 

" When you first asked yourself why you 
believed Christianity, nothing was further from your 
thoughts than its rejection. You were young, 
You had not, and you could not have had, at that 
age, the necessary acquaintance either with human 
nature or the Gospel, to be able to assign rational 
grounds for believing Christianity. You doubted, 
because you wanted evidence to convince, and 
that evidence you were not then in a state to re- 
ceive. If your Christian friends had encouraged 
you to doubt, told you that it was your duty to 
doubt till you should attain to rational conviction ; if 
they had exhorted you to push your investigations 
into all subjects, sacred or profane, and bid you 
abide by the result of your investigations, be that 
result what it might, you would never have ranked 
yourself among unbelievers, but would have long 
ere this attained to a well-grounded faith in God, 
Christ, and immortality. 

"But your friends I will venture to say were 
not wise enough for this. They told you these 
doubts were sinful, were from the Devil, and you 
must stifle them. They undertook to frighten you. 
They talked to you of death and the judgment, 
told you long raw-head-and-bloody-bones stories 
about the death-bed, of noted unbelievers, and 
with cant and rigmarole, if not direct abuse and 
denunciation, sought to win you back to the church. 
Poor fools ! They took the very course to make 
you disgusted with religion and ambitious to be- 



134 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

come an infidel. Firmly as I believe in God, 
Christ, and immortality, I confess, I rarely meet 
with a work written in defence of Christianity, that 
does not stir the devil in me, and make me ready 
to renew the old war of the Titans upon the Gods. 
If the Gods cannot employ more respectable ad- 
vocates than they have hitherto done, I think it were 
no mean honor to be sent to hell for giving judg- 
ment against them. Happily, however, we are not 
dependent on their feed advocates, nor the wit- 
nesses they summon. Let God alone, and he will 
plead his own cause, and for witnesses, — we 
have a witness within worth all others. 

" But this by the way. The philosophical ele- 
ment in you was strong and active. You must 
have a reason for the faith you avowed. That ele- 
ment the church disowned and would not suffer 
you to obey. But the infidel owned it and bid 
you obey it. You sided then with the infidel 
against the church, that you might be free to phi- 
losophize ; in other words, that you might be at 
liberty to exercise your mind freely upon all sub- 
jects you should judge worthy of your examination. 
You became an infidel for the same reason that 
Luther became a protestant. Luther became a 
protestant not because he objected to the creed of 
the catholic church, but because he would not sub- 
mit to the authority of the Pope. So you rejected 
Christianity not because you had found its doc- 
trines untrue, but because the church in its name 



A PARADOX. 135 

asserted an authority over your faith which you 
deemed unwarrantable and mischievous." 

" But I think my inquiries proved that the su- 
pernatural pretensions of Christianity were un- 
founded." 

U I care nothing for your inquiries, — asking 
your pardon, sir ; for they came afterwards. The 
reasons you may have alleged for disbelieving 
Christianity were not the reasons which induced 
you to disbelieve it ; but, reasons which you raked 
together afterwards to justify your disbelief." 

" But this philosophical element of which you 
speak, do you mean to assert that it is a Christian 
element?" 

" Of course I do." 



CHAPTER XVII. 



RATIONALISM. 



" Philosophy has a place in the history of man- 
kind, and must therefore result from a want in- 
herent in our nature. Men do not philosophize 
through mere caprice, but in obedience to an in- 
destructible law of human nature. All men feel 
more or less strongly the want of comprehending, 
accounting for, and verifying their beliefs. This 
want is what I term the philosophical element of 
human nature. 

" Christianity is the name I give to the law of 
man's perfection. The design of Jesus was to 
make us perfect men. He did not propose to 
perfect us by changing our natures, converting us 
into a different sort of being ; but by developing 
our nature, by calling forth in their legitimate order 
and stimulating to their highest activity all the 
faculties with which we were originally endowed 
by our Creator. If the religious and ethical system 
he has proposed to this end, be narrower than 
human nature, if it leave out of its account any 
one element of that nature, it cannot secure the 



RATIONALISM. 137 

perfection contemplated. Could it then be proved 
that Christianity neglects or prohibits the exercise 
of the philosophical element, I would discard it as 
quick as if it neglected the religious element, 
properly so called. 

" Christianity addresses itself to me as a being 
endowed with reason. It presupposes me capable 
of knowing and comprehending. It makes its 
appeal not to my senses, but to my reason. If 
then it should begin by denying my right to exer- 
cise my reason, which is virtually denying the 
reason itself, it would leave no reason to respond 
to its appeal. It is the reason that must pronounce 
upon its truth or falsity ; but if we deny both the 
right and the competency of the reason to do this, 
we can never have any grounds for believing 
Christianity true or false, consequently no reason 
whatever for feeling ourselves obliged to obey it. 
Religion can dispense with reason, no better than 
philosophy can, for reason is its only interpreter 
and voucher." 

" The Bible, I have supposed, commands us not 
to reason, but to believe, and assures us that we 
shall be damned if we do not." 

" The Bible never threatens damnation as the 
punishment of disbelief, as such. But in relation 
to the language of the Bible on this and many 
other topics, there is, I apprehend, some slight 
mistake. Before you can rightly interpret the 
Bible you must take its authors' point of sight. 



138 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

You, as well as many Christians, give to nature 
a causative power, an independent activity. If 
you believed in God, you would never think of • 
ascribing to his agency what you could trace to the 
operation of what you term natural laws. In fact 
the Christian world is at present prone to restrict 
the sphere of the Divine activity, and to introduce 
the ' Deus ex Machind ' only when the powers of 
nature prove to be inadequate. 

" But this is all wrong. Nature has no inde- 
pendent activity, no causality of its own. God is 
the only independent existence, and he is the cause 
of all causes. The laws of nature are his will. 
Truth is not one thing and God another ; right is 
not one thing and God another. You admit that 
you ought to believe the truth, and to do what is 
right. Then you admit, if you understand your- 
self, that you are bound to believe what God com- 
mands, and to do what he ordains. To say a thing 
is commanded by God, is precisely the same thing 
it is to say that it is true, it is right. God com- 
mands it ; the right enjoins it ; it is right ; are 
merely three different modes of expressing, one 
and the same thing. 

" Now the authors of the Bible always take this 
view, and regard God as the absolute sovereign of 
the universe, whose will is law, — consequently 
they promulgate all particular truths in the form 
of commands. God commands us to do this, not 
to do that ; ordains that do this and ye shall live, 



RATIONALISM. ] 39 

do that and ye shall die. Now this form of speak- 
ing is strictly just, and implies no more restriction 
on mental freedom than does the more common 
form of saying, this is true, and therefore ought 
to be believed ; this is right, and therefore ought to 
be done. God is everlasting and immutable right, 
eternal and unalterable truth. His words then are 
in the highest and strictest sense commands. He 
who utters a truth promulgates a command of God ; 
he who points out a right or a duty declares a law 
of God, and has a right to say, thus God wills, thus 
saith the Lord. Be sure that what you utter is 
true, is right, and you are authorized to proclaim 
it as the command of God, and to demand in the 
name of God obedience. The Bible-writers then 
make no war upon, the rights of the mind, when 
they utter the truths they behold in the form of 
commands. All truth is authoritative, — a Divine 
command, and whoso rebels against it, rebels 
against his legitimate sovereign." 

" But does the Bible do what you seem to 
imply ? Does it never proclaim anything but the 
truth ? " 

" That is, are its words, the words of God ; are 
its commands always the commands of truth ? 
That is a subject for the human mind to determine. 
So far as it speaks truth, I contend it has the right 
to say, c thus saith the Lord,' ' so God commands.' 
Our business is to ascertain what it really promul- 
gates as the commands of God, and then if what 



140 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

it promulgates be really the commands of God, 
that is, true." 

" But are you at liberty to make both of these 
inquiries ? Will Christianity suffer you to do it ? " 

" If it would not, I would not suffer myself to 
be one of its advocates. I have no confidence in 
any system of faith or of morals that shrinks from 
investigation. Not truth but falsehood shuns the 
light." 

" But we are told that the Bible is the word of 
God, and therefore we must receive it blindly, 
implicitly." 

" I rarely ask what I am told ; I ask what is 
true. Be it that I am told that the Bible is the 
word of God, just so far as I find it true, I will 
admit it to be the word of God, but no further." 

" Do you discriminate ? The Bible is a whole, 
and as a whole is to be taken or rejected. They 
say we must believe what is in the Bible, because 
it is in the Bible, not because independently of the 
Bible, we have ascertained it to be true." 

" They say ! No more of that. I believe a 
proposition because I discover, or fancy I discover 
it to be true, not because I find it in one book or 
another ; and I obey a command because I believe 
it just, not because it emanates from one source or 
another." 

" But how do you determine whether a given 
proposition be true or false, — a given command 
be just or unjust ? " 



RATIONALISM. 141 

" By the reason with which I am endowed, freely 
developed and conscientiously directed." 

" We are back where we were. Does Chris- 
tianity allow you to do this ? " 

" No, it does not allow me to do it ; but com- 
mands me, makes it my duty to do it. c Why,' 
says Jesus to the Jews and through them to all 
men, ' why even of yourselves judge ye not what 
is right ? ' ' If I do not the works of my Father 
believe me not.' Here is a distinct recognition of 
a power in man to judge what is and what is not 
riglit, and what are and what are not the works of 
God, together with a call upon us to exercise this 
power. If we have the power to determine what 
are the works of God, we of course have the 
power to determine what is true or false. And 
this power it is our duty to exercise." 

" The church will dissent from your interpre- 
tation." 

" And I, sir, will in that case dissent from the 
church. I am no believer in the infallibility of 
the church. The church has always misinter- 
preted the authority of truth. She has ever had 
a profound sentiment of the authoritativeness of 
truth, that every man is bound to believe and obey 
the truth ; that no man can knowingly disregard 
the truth and be guiltless. So far she has been 
right. But on this she has built up a system of 
ecclesiastical tyranny which it behooves every 
wise man to protest against. She has first as- 



142 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

sumed that she has the truth, identified her 
teachings with the teachings of God, and then 
claimed for herself the authority which belongs 
only to truth — to God. Now between the church 
and absolute truth there may be a distance, and 
her practice of claiming for herself what belongs 
of right to truth, is founded on a species of logic 
I am by no means disposed to admit. 

" I admit the absolute authority of God, and of 
course of truth, since I hold truth to be one with 
God. Show me the truth, and I own my obliga- 
tion to submit to it. But I deny that the church 
has any more authority to interpret truth, and de- 
clare the will of God than I have. I make no 
war upon the church because it has asserted the 
principle of authority, for I contend as strongly as 
she does for that principle. Her error consists in 
placing that principle where it does not belong, in 
claiming it for an individual or a corporation that 
has no right to it. I deny the legitimacy of all 
merely human government. God alone is sov- 
ereign. No power is legitimate that is not or- 
dained of God. But when the church commands 
me to believe this or that she speaks in her own 
name, and substitutes a human authority for that 
of God. Here is her grand error. It was this 
assumption on the part of the catholic church that 
provoked the protest of the Eeformers in the six- 
teenth century ; it is this assumption on the part of 
all protestant churches now that leads to the pro- 



RATIONALISM. 143 

test of modern infidelity against all religion. And 
so long as the church continues to make this as- 
sumption, I will hold her accountable for all the 
infidelity which obtains. 

" Of all tyrannies ecclesiastical tyranny is the 
worst, because it penetrates to the soul, and binds 
the conscience as well as the body. It makes man a 
slave within as well as without, and therefore utterly 
a slave. You may bind my body, you may task the 
motions of my limbs, but I am still a man if my 
soul be free, if my thoughts be not curbed, and my 
conscience itself fettered. In all ages the priest- 
hood have established this tyranny, and they every- 
where struggle with all their might to retain it. 
Even those of our clergy who fancy themselves 
the advocates of religious freedom still cling in 
principle and in fact to this same tyranny. They 
indeed protest against the authority of Rome, but 
they set up a written word for which they claim 
equal authority. They war against the hierarchy, 
but they claim infallibility for the congregation. 
The greatest extent to which their love of liberty 
will carry them, is freedom from all civil restraints 
in matters of religious worship. But this is no 
more than Rome always contended for. This was 
the principle involved in the long struggle between 
the popes and the emperors. The church claimed 
for religion freedom, entire freedom from the re- 
straints of the civil power. But she by no means 
allowed the individual freedom from the restrictions 



144 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

of the ecclesiastical power. Nor do the modern 
clerical advocates of religious liberty in our own 
country. With us each church has its creed, 
expressed or implied, conformity to which consti- 
tutes the Christian character. The Calvinistic 
clergyman is no more free in the full and enlarged 
sense of the term than is the Romish priest. In 
our own country I presume few can be found who 
would impose civil restrictions on religious belief; 
yet there are still fewer, claiming to be religious, 
who would leave the individual free to form his 
own creed, and to abide by his own honest convic- 
tions of the truth." 

" Do you then claim for the individual reason 
the right to interpret the word of God ?" 

" I do, and more than is commonly implied in 
the remark. I not only claim for the individual 
reason the right to interpret the Bible, which is 
commonly meant, but the whole word of God, 
whether written or unwritten ; that is, the right to 
decide in all cases whatever, what J am to em- 
brace as truth. But of course I hold that I am to 
use my reason reasonably. In determining what 
is truth, I am to survey the whole proposition, and 
to avail myself of all the aid I can. I am not to 
confine myself to my own consciousness, to my 
own experience ; but must interrogate the con- 
sciousness, the experience of the race, so as to come 
as near as possible, by means of my individual 
reason, to the decisions of the universal reason, of 
which my reason is a fragment. In this inquiry, 



RATIONALISM. 145 

the Bible as being the most authentic record of 
the experience of the race, or of the teachings of 
the universal reason, or what is the same thing, — 
the revelations of God, becomes to me of the 
greatest possible value, and my surest guide." 

" I can only say that, though I object nothing to 
your doctrine, I apprehend the Christian world 
will no more own you than it would me." 

" As to that I shall not trouble myself. I believe 
I see very clearly the signs of the times. Men 
are not precisely what they were. Knowledge is 
no longer the exclusive property of the clergy. 
The laity have been to school, and are going to 
school ; and it is shrewdly suspected by some that 
there is no especial virtue in the imposition of hands, 
or in gown and band, to enable one to see and 
know the truth. It is beginning to be believed that 
humanity in all its integrity, is in every member 
of the race, that each member therefore has the 
right and the power to form his own creed. The 
church may war against this new state of things, 
but she will by so doing only hasten the day of her 
dissolution. The human race is already escaping 
from her dominion. It demands a reason, and she 
must give it, or be discarded. She must recognise 
the authority of pure reason in matters of religion 
as well as natural science, or she will go the way 
of all the earth. I say this in no Titanic spirit, 
but with a deep respect for the church, and an 
earnest wish for her future glory." 
10 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE PREACHER. 

The day following the conversation I have just 
related, was Sunday, and Mr. Howard for the first 
time invited me to accompany him to his meeting. 
He remarked that his minister, though pretty 
orthodox in the main, was a little peculiar, and 
perhaps I should find myself interested, if not edi- 
fied. Years had elapsed since I had entered a 
place of religious worship, and though I felt no 
great desire on my part to hear a sermon, yet as 
I thought I might please Mr. Howard by going, I 
accepted his invitation. 

The place of meeting was a public hall capable 
of holding some eight or nine hundred persons, 
and I found it well filled with a plain, sensible- 
looking congregation, whose earnest countenances 
indicated that they were there not because it was 
a place of fashionable resort, but because they 
were serious worshippers and honest inquirers after 
truth. A single glance told you that they were 
bold, earnest minds, who could look truth steadily 
in the face, let her assume what shape she might. 

The preacher, a Mr. Morton, was a tall, well- 



THE PREACHER. 147 

proportioned man, with something a little rustic 
in his appearance, indicating that his life had not 
been spent in the circles of the gay and the 
fashionable. Though far from being handsome, 
his features were striking and impressed them- 
selves indelibly upon the memory. His dark com- 
plexion, and small, restless black eye bespoke an 
active and also an irritable disposition, and assured 
you that he might say some bitter things. His 
head was large, and his brow elevated and ex- 
panded. His face bore the marks of past strug- 
gle, whether with passion, the world, or sorrow, it 
was not easy to say. He was apparently under 
forty years of age, but you felt that he was a 
man who could speak from experience, that he 
was in fact no ordinary man, but one who had a 
biography, if you could only get at it. There was 
something almost repulsive about him, and yet you 
were drawn insensibly towards him. 

On commencing his discourse he seemed not 
exactly at his ease, and his address was hurried, 
and ungraceful. His voice, too, though deep- 
toned, grated harshly on the ear, and produced a 
most unfavorable impression. But there was an 
air of earnestness about him, an evidence of intel- 
lectual vigor, and of moral honesty, which arrested 
your attention ; while the novelty of his views and 
the boldness of his language served to enchain it till 
he closed. His discourse was to me a most sin- 
gular production. I had never heard such a ser- 



148 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

mon before ; and I confess I listened to it with the 
deepest interest. As a copy of it subsequently 
came into my hands, I will here give it word for 
word as he delivered it, although I am aware that 
it can hardly make the same impression upon my 
readers that it did upon me. But to the sermon. 

" But I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was 
preached of me is not after man. For I neither received 
it of man, nor was I taught it but by the revelation of 
Jesus Christ. — Gal. i. It, 12." 

The declaration of Paul in these words is 
worthy of grave consideration. There is more in 
it than at first sight meets the eye. 

Paul, you are aware, had much trouble with his 
brother believers. Many, a large portion of the 
Jewish, or as we should say to-day, orthodox be- 
lievers in Christianity, looked upon him as unsound 
in the faith, and as one who might do mischief. 
They no doubt held him to be honest, probably 
admired his zeal, and did homage to the earnest- 
ness and singleness of purpose with which he 
gave himself up to the great work of diffusing 
Christianity as he understood it ; but then they 
feared that his boldness, his rashness, the freedom 
of his speculations, might compromit the Gospel, 
and secure its enemies a triumph. Hence where- 
ever he went, they followed him, scattering doubts 
as to his orthodoxy, warning the people not to 
listen to him, and laboring to secure the adoption 



THE PREACHER. 149 

of certain notions, or the observance of certain 
rites or ceremonies which he declared to be unes- 
sential or inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

It was to defend himself from the charges pre- 
ferred by these orthodox opponents of his, to 
rebuke them for their folly or ignorance, and to 
recall his Galatian brethren to the simplicity, truth, 
and freedom of the Gospel, that he wrote this epistle, 
from which I have taken my text ; and he alleges 
as his defence the fact that the Gospel he was 
preaching, he did not receive from men, nor was 
he taught it by men, but by the revelation of Jesus 
Christ. 

Paul had come to Christianity through the free 
action of his own mind, and had embraced it be- 
cause convinced of its truth. He had opposed it, 
but not on account of that for which others em- 
braced it, but on account of something which they 
probably did not see. 

The early believers in Christianity were Jews. 
But in believing Christianity they did not consider 
themselves as rejecting Judaism. They held on 
to the law of Moses after believing in Christ as 
firmly as they did before. They saw nothing in 
Christianity which required them to abandon their 
previous religious notions or observances. They 
saw no inconsistency in swearing by both Moses 
and Christ. 

Paul, however, was too keen-sighted, and pos- 



150 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

sessed too logical a mind, to fall into this mistake. 
He saw from the first that if Christ should in- 
crease Moses must decrease. The prevalence of 
the new religion was incompatible with the exist- 
ence of the old. This was doubtless the secret of 
his hostility to Christianity. Bred a Jew, brought 
up at the feet of Gamaliel, according to the strict- 
est sect of the Jewish religion, he very naturally 
believed the Jewish religion, even to its letter, 
was of divine authority. How could he then 
regard with indifference the prevalence of a heresy 
which struck at the very existence of the whole 
Jewish economy, and which, if not checked, must 
change the whole religious faith and practice of 
his countrymen ? He opposed Christianity then, 
because it was directly opposed to the religion he 
believed to be from God. 

When he became converted to Christianity, he 
did not hesitate to avow it, and to engage with the 
whole ardor of his soul in the defence of his new 
faith. But in becoming converted to Christianity, 
he did not become convinced that it and Judaism 
were one and the same thing. He recognised the 
same opposition between them now that he did 
before. He believed now as he did before that 
Judaism and Christianity were in the main two 
distinct religions, and could never be made to har- 
monize together. He therefore rejected Judaism 
now as he had Christianity before. Consequently 
he saw that those Christians who still clung to the 



THE PREACHER. 151 

Jewish law, and the traditions of the fathers, had 
but a partial view of the Gospel, and were in fact 
deceiving themselves and seeking justification by 
conforming to a law by the deeds of which no 
flesh could be justified. He wished them to be 
Christians, not Jews ; to rely on Christ, not on 
Moses ; on the spirit, not on the flesh ; on grace, 
not on works ; for to attempt to seek justification 
by the Jewish law was mere folly. Hence the 
cause and the nature of the controversy with them 
in which he was engaged. They rejoiced no 
doubt to find him converted from a bitter oppo- 
nent to a zealous defender of the new faith ; they 
were no doubt highly delighted that he gave his 
powerful aid to the Christian cause ; but then why 
need he oppose Judaism ? Why need he be so 
belligerent, and oppose so strenuously the tradi- 
tions and usages they held sacred ? 

The case of Paul is by no means a singular 
one. Let a man in these days, and in this com- 
munity come to a belief in Christianity through 
infidelity, and after having long opposed it, and he 
will find that his case is very much the same. 
He will inevitably embrace Christianity in a shape 
somewhat different from that most approved by the 
doctors of the church. Christianity, according to 
their reading, had failed to satisfy him. He had 
seen, what perhaps none of them had seen, that 
Christianity, according to their interpretations, was 
inconsistent with itself, that it opposed or neglected 



152 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

some essential element of truth, and therefore 
deserved to be rejected. But in his lone inquiries, 
in his silent meditations, in his secret interviews 
with the Egeria of his soul, the spirit of truth, he 
has become convinced that Christianity, rightly in- 
terpreted, is true, is from God. The scales fall 
from his eyes, and he is exalted in his soul to the 
third heaven, where he converses with Jesus and 
holds fellowship with the Father. His views are 
clear and definite ; his soul is fired with a holy 
zeal ; and he goes forth with a kindling enthusi- 
asm to proclaim the glad tidings of his new faith. 
He is indefatigable in his labors, doing more in a 
week than the sleek doctors of the church in 
years. All rejoice in the new convert ; all hail 
the energy with which he goes to his work, the 
fervor with which he prays, and the unction with 
which he preaches. 

But this man, though converted to Christianity, 
has not been converted to the traditions of the 
fathers, nor does he defend them. He has been 
converted to a Christianity freed from the defects 
and inconsistences which he had found in the 
Christianity of the doctors, and which had driven 
him to infidelity. He is converted to Christ, not 
to Moses, — preaches Christianity, not Judaism. 
Forthwith a clamor is raised against him. He 
may be honest, it is said, may speak with power, 
may labor abundantly, may wish to do good, and 
even fancy that he is doing good ; but he is too 



THE PREACHER. 153 

rash, too bold ; he does not see to what some of 
his assertions lead ; he does not pay respect enough 
to the usage of the churches ; and we are afraid 
that he will unsettle the faith of many, breed dis- 
order and do great harm to the holy cause of re- 
ligion. 

Let this man go where he will, let him labor 
with all zeal, diligence and fidelity, let him wear 
out his body in the intense activity of his mind, 
stand alone, forego most of the kindly charities 
and sympathies of civilized life, suffer poverty 
and want, and he shall find his christian brethren 
everywhere, and always the first to oppose him, 
diligent to throw suspicion on the worth of his 
labors, and to warn the people neither to believe 
him nor to listen to his words. And all the while 
they shall profess to have a generous concern for 
his welfare, to wish him well, and to be very sorry 
that he will ruin himself by his rashness, and his 
wild speculations. It is a great pity that he can- 
not be a little more prudent, and not be ever 
saying things which cannot but alienate from him 
his best friends. 

Here comes in Paul's defence. Brethren, I 
profess and preach to you the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ ; but I certify you that I did not receive it 
of men, neither was I taught it but by the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is no human 
device. Man has not made it, man does not own 
it ; man has no right to authorize it nor to impose 



154 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

it ; nor to say how it shall or shall not be preached. 
It is from God, and it is the duty of every one to 
whom Jesus Christ reveals it, to preach it as he 
has received it, and that too without conferring 
with flesh and blood. 

If we recur more particularly to this defence, 
we shall find that it contains several propositions 
of which we shall do well not to lose sight. 

" I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which 
was preached of me, — or by me, — is not after 
man." 

The meaning of this, I apprehend, is that he 
did not preach to them a Gospel which men had 
authorized him to preach. Grant, he would say, 
that the Gospel I preached unto you was in some, 
yea in all respects different from that which others 
preach unto you, what then ? I came not to you 
as the envoy of men, nor of any particular class 
or set of men. I never entered into any engage- 
ment to preach other men's Gospels, or to preach 
to you what others, who regard themselves as 
the followers of Jesus, may preach to you, or 
contend ought to be preached. Men have no 
authority over my Gospel, to dictate to me what 
I shall preach ; and I preach not because be- 
lievers have authorized or ordained and sent me 
forth to preach. I stand on my own feet, speak 
for myself, and hold myself accountable to no 
human tribunal for the doctrines I teach. If then 
I teach not what others profess to believe, or con- 



THE PREACHER. 155 

tend ought to be believed ; if I entertain not the 
traditions of the elders and support not all the 
usages of the fathers, the congregations of believ- 
ers have no right to call me to an account. I am 
not their agent ; I speak not in their name, and 
whether I agree with them or not, is a matter of no 
moment. 

In this Paul evidently sets aside the doctrine of 
ordination. It has been supposed that every 
preacher must by a solemn act of ordination re- 
ceive authority to teach. When the church has 
ordained him, he goes out in the name of the 
church, which is responsible for his doctrines, and 
to which he must hold himself responsible in re- 
turn. Hence the jurisdiction the church has 
claimed over its preachers, and the right to which 
it has pretended, of trying them for heresy, and of 
suspending them from their ministry. But all 
this is wrong. No man, no body of men can 
give me or any one else, authority to teach. 
Every true preacher of the Gospel goes forth on 
his own responsibility, and speaks as God gives 
him utterance, without being amenable therefor to 
any earthly tribunal, whether termed civil or ec- 
clesiastical. Men have no business to call him to 
an account for what he utters, the church has no 
right to try him for heresy, or to suspend him from 
his ministry, however obnoxious to its displeasure 
may be the doctrines he sets forth. Grant that he 
departs from the traditions of the elders, from the 



156 . CHARLES ELWOOD. 

usages of the fathers, and does not adopt the 
reading of learned and reverend doctors, they 
have nothing to do with him, but to convince him 
by arguments addressed to his reason and con- 
science, that he is wrong. 

Paul also asserts that he did not receive the 
Gospel he preached, from men, nor was he taught 
it by men. He had not learned the Gospel he 
was preaching from the brethren who were ac- 
cusing him. They had not been his masters, 
and he therefore was under no obligation to them. 
He had not studied with the Apostles, he had not 
taken from them even the formula of his faith ; 
but had retired into Arabia, and not until after 
three years of solitary study, of communion with 
himself and with God, had he undertaken to preach. 
It was not then as a pupil of the Apostles, but as a 
brother apostle, standing on equal ground with 
the immediate disciples of Jesus themselves, that 
he came forward as the preacher of the Gospel. 
He stood up a free and independent man, to utter 
the words God gave him to utter, and without re- 
ferring to the words uttered by others or asking 
whether his harmonized with theirs or not. He 
felt that he had as much right to call the immediate 
disciples of Jesus to an account as they him. In 
a word, he was preaching on his own hook, what 
he had learned of God to believe. 

He was taught by Jesus Christ, who was ac- 
knowledged by all as an authoritative teacher. 



THE PREACHER. 157 

Jesus Christ was ultimate, the highest possible 
authority, in the estimation of all believers ; Paul 
then in claiming to have been taught by Jesus 
Christ, claimed to have received the Gospel he 
preached from the highest possible authority. In 
claiming this he claimed to have drawn his doc- 
trines from the primal source of truth. Grant, 
then, that he differed from his brethren ; the error 
was as likely to be on their side as on his. Grant 
that he condemned Judaism as insufficient to wash 
out guilt and raise the soul to union with God ; he 
might, nevertheless, be even a more consistent 
Christian than they who upheld it, and suffered no 
departure from the traditions of the elders. 

I have called your attention' to this profession of 
Paul, of having been taught but by the revelation 
of Jesus Christ, for another purpose than that of 
showing you how he defended himself from the 
charges brought against him. I think I see in it 
something which was not merely local and tem- 
porary, but which belongs to all times and to all 
individuals. I think I see here the recognition of 
the fact that the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be 
learned of men. The immediate disciples of Jesus 
could have taught it if any body could ; but Paul 
would not go and study even with them. He 
would not take the Gospel at second hand. He 
would go to the primal source and receive it on as 
high authority as that possessed by the personal 
followers of Jesus, — would go to the master and 



158 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

not to the disciple. Everyone should do the same 
to-day. Every one should draw from the original 
fountain, take Jesus Christ and none other for his 
instructer. 

Thus far I suppose all will agree to what I say. 
But I pray you observe that when they send us to 
Christ, to the original fountain, it is to the Bible 
they send us. I speak with all becoming reverence 
of the Bible ; but you must own to me that the 
Bible, the written Word, as we possess it now, is 
not an authority so high as that possessed by the 
oral teachings of the immediate followers of Jesus. 
You would esteem the instructions which Peter, 
James and John, were they here to-day, could 
furnish you, of higher authority than the mere 
record of their past instructions you read in the 
Bible. If they were here, and you should dis- 
cover a discrepancy between their teachings and 
the New Testament, you would rely on the former 
rather than on the latter. Then the instructions 
which Paul might have received from the immediate 
disciples of Jesus, were more ultimate than those 
which we can gather from the New Testament. 
But even the instructions of these immediate dis- 
ciples were not ultimate enough for him. He 
would not learn even of them. He would go to 
Jesus Christ himself, and learn of the master. Now 
the Bible is the work, not of the master, but of the 
disciple ; how then can sending us to the Bible be 
sending us to Jesus Christ, to the Master ? 



THE PREACHER. 159 

The New Testament is a record which has come 
down to us of the teachings of the disciples ; or if 
you please, a record which the disciples have left 
us of the teachings of their Master ; but we can 
conceive something more ultimate still ; to wit, 
the original instructions themselves. Those in- 
structions could you obtain them, you would value 
more than any record it would be possible to make 
of them. There is then, or there once was, a 
higher source of truth than the Bible. Paul held 
the disciples themselves not high enough. He 
would go above them, and learn from their Master, 
and is there any more reason why I should regard 
the Bible as high enough, than there was that he 
should count their instructions high enough ? Why 
should not I as well as Paul go above the Bible, to 
the very source from which the Bible-makers them- 
selves drew ? Do I learn of Christ when I merely 
learn of the Bible, any more than Paul would have 
learned of him, had he taken only the lessons of 
the disciples ? 

But I may be told that Jesus Christ instructed 
Paul, as well as the other disciples, so that he 
might have another apostle to send forth into the 
field ; and that since Paul evidently drew his in- 
structions from the highest source, we should be 
content to learn of him. I am not satisfied with 
this. I know I am a sinner ; but I do not know 
what I have done that I should not have as good 
evidence for mv faith as Paul had for his : nor 



160 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

why I should not have as able instructers as he 
had. I know not wherefore Paul should have had 
Jesus for his instructer, and I only have certain 
Letters Paul is said to have written for mine. 
Why such partiality ? Am not I also a man ? 
Am not I born as he was? Is not my nature as 
good as his was ? Do I not stand in as much need 
of instruction as he did ? Why then send him to 
the Master, and turn me off with the Disciple ? 

Shall I be told that there was once indeed, a 
source of divine knowledge more original than the 
Bible, that then Jesus Christ was on earth, and 
his immediate instructions might be obtained ; but 
that now all is changed, and we must receive 
our instructions from the written Word only ? I 
do not understand this. Is there not a Jesus 
Christ now as much as there was in the time of 
Paul ? Was Jesus Christ any more accessible to 
Paul than he is to me ? Beware how you answer 
these questions, lest you be found denying the 
resurrection. To say there was a Jesus Christ, 
but is not now, is only another form of denying 
the Lord that bought us. You might in that case 
believe, indeed, in a Saviour for Paul, but in none 
for me. But Paul himself teaches you better than 
this. He tells you not to say within yourselves, 
" Who shall ascend into heaven ? that is, to bring 
Christ down from above : or who shall descend 
into the deep ? that is, to bring up Christ again 
from the dead. The word is nigh thee, even in 



THE PREACHER. 161 

thy mouth, and in thy heart." Christ is not dead, 
but ever living, — not off in some distant world, 
but ever present, ever abiding with us, and ever 
saying unto us, " Learn of me," for " lo I am 
with you unto the end of the world." 

Most people, I apprehend, fancy that all super- 
natural revelations from God have ceased, and that 
Christ teaches now only through the medium of 
the written Word. But are they aware, that to 
believe so is as good as to deny both God and 
Christ ? To say that God has discontinued his 
revelations to man, is only saying in other words, 
that all intercourse between him and us, is broken 
off; which is virtually saying that we are without 
God ; at least that there is for us no living God, 
but only a God that was, but is not. . A God that 
was but is not, is no God at all. To say that 
there was a Christ who taught men, but is not now, 
is to assert merely a dead Christ not a living, — 
is in fact to deny the resurrection. 

There is an error quite prevalent, even among 
religious people, that of believing only in a Divin- 
ity which was, but is not. All admit that God 
made the world, very few that he makes it. After 
having spent a whole eternity in the contempla- 
tion of himself, it is supposed that some six thou- 
sand years ago, he spoke the universe into exist- 
ence with all its furniture of worlds and beings, 
impressed upon it its laws, wound it up as the 
clockmaker does his clock, gave the pendulum a 
11 



162 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

jog, set it a-going, and then left it to go of itself. 
Just as though the universe could subsist a moment 
if the Deity, as its cause, did not remain in it, its 
life and substance, and motion ! So though they 
admit that God has once and a while concerned 
himself with the piece of mechanism he had con- 
structed, and condescended to give a few direc- 
tions for its management, yet it was all in the 
past, long ages ago. No interference now, no 
God to reveal himself to us, who stand so much in 
need of his instructions. So also they admit that 
a Saviour once appeared in Judea, was crucified 
under Pontius Pilate for the redemption of the 
world, but there is no Jesus Christ now. The 
Saviour did not rise from the dead, and there is 
only a traditional Christ in which we may trust. 
How has the age lapsed into infidelity ! 

Brethren, I believe in a living God, in a God 
who not only made the world, but who makes it ; 
who is not only above and independent of his 
works, but w T ho is ever present in them ; who not 
only revealed himself to men in past ages, but 
who also reveals himself to men even now, and 
who is always seen by the pure in heart, and 
everywhere. I contend also for a living Saviour, 
not for a Saviour who lived and died in Judea, a 
temporary and local Saviour ; but for one who fills 
all space, and is the same " yesterday, to-day 
and forever." I have no sympathy with the Arian 
heresy of ancient times, nor with the Socinian 



THE PREACHER. 163 

heresy of modern times, which the church seems 
almost universally to embrace, save in name. 
The Christ in whom I believe is one with the 
Father, and he lives now, and is as much within 
the reach of the humble seeker after truth to-day as 
he was when Jesus walked about in Jerusalem and 
Galilee. Beware how you seek for your Saviour 
in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Seek not 
the living among the dead. Christ has risen, and 
ever liveth to make intercession for us. O, deny 
not the glorious doctrine of the resurrection. 
Deny that doctrine and you are without hope in 
the world, and there is left you no redemption 
from sin. 

The Christ from whom we are to learn the 
Gospel is not an old Christ, a Jewish Christ, a 
dead Christ, but the risen Christ, who comes to 
us not as the Son of Mary, clothed in flesh and 
subject to its infirmities, but as the Paraclete, the 
Comforter, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, who 
was to lead us into all truth. The Holy Ghost 
though distinguished in name, is one with the Son 
the Christ, who is also one with the Father, 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three Gods 
but one God. What is predicated of the one 
under the relation I am now considering the sub 
ject, may be predicated of the other. The teach 
ings of the Holy Spirit, are the teachings of 
Christ. This Holy Spirit, the Comforter, was to 
be ever with us, and Jesus said, " He shall take of 



164 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

mine, and show them unto you." The manifesta- 
tions of this Spirit are given unto all men to profit 
withal. The teachings of the Spirit are the Gos- 
pel of Christ, and to learn the Gospel from the 
Spirit, is to learn it from the Master. 

The teachings of the risen Christ, the ever- 
abiding Christ, the universal Christ, the true Light 
which enlighteneth every man that cometh into 
the world, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, I 
hold to be superior to all other teachings. They 
are more ultimate than the written Word, and to 
them we may appeal even from the Bible, if there 
be occasion. It is this, sometimes termed the 
inward Christ, because a spiritual Christ, and not 
a corporeal, that judges the Bible, interprets the 
Bible and vouches for its truth. This is the Mas- 
ter, the Bible is merely the Disciple. This Christ 
is near unto every one of us, knocking ever at the 
door of our hearts and praying for admission, and 
we may all let him in and receive his instructions. 
Whomsoever he instructs is the equal of the Bible, 
the peer of Peter, James or John ; for Peter, 
James and John had no means of knowing divine 
truth, which you and I, my brethren, have not also 
within our reach. 

I come now to the conclusion I have all along 
been aiming at ; to wit, the entire independence 
of every individual mind, as it concerns every 
other individual mind, in the acquisition of truth 
and the formation of its creed* God is impar- 



THE PREACHER. 165 

tial. He dispenses light alike to all men, of all 
ages and nations. All may know the truth, may 
know the Gospel, one as well as another. Every 
one has the Great Teacher within. No one there- 
fore need go to another to he taught. The witness 
is within, and may bear witness that he is born 
of God. 

Now in learning the Gospel you must do more 
than to go back and explore the archives of Judea, 
more than pore over the records of the past. The 
past is silent, and darkness broods over it. The light 
by which you shall behold it, the spirit by which 
you shall revivify it, and give it a voice and a 
meaning, must be borrowed from the Great 
Teacher within. You must seek the revelations 
of the Spirit, you must commune with the Divinity 
within you ; and the word which you shall hear 
uttered within you, shall be superior to any writ- 
ten word whatever ; it shall prove to be the living 
Word of God, which proceedeth forth from the 
Father, which was in the beginning with God, and 
which is God. 

If every one have this Great Teacher, this Pri- 
mal Source of truth in himself, there is no one 
dependent on another. No child of God is disin- 
herited, and obliged to depend on an elder brother 
for support. No one then has the right to call 
another to an account for his belief. All are 
equals, and where all are equals no one has the 
supremacy. 



166 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

If this be true, then whoso learns of Christ, 
of the inward Christ, has authority to teach. He 
may utter his words, whatever they may be, for 
they are not his words but the Spirit's. If the 
Spirit bid him bear his testimony against the tradi- 
tions of the elders, the usages of the churches, 
the lessons of the doctors, so be it ; let him do it 
and fear nothing. He must needs speak as the 
Spirit giveth him utterance. Let those whom he 
offends look to it, that it turn not out that they are 
offended, not at him, but at the Spirit of God. He 
may indeed mistake the teachings of the Spirit, he 
may misinterpret his instructions ; let him there- 
fore be modest, humble, prayerful, that he may 
not hear amiss. And let all who are wedded to 
old usages, who are ever pointing to our pious 
ancestors as if truth must needs have died with 
them, know of a surety, that truth is an Immor- 
tality, and over it time and change have no 
power. Its bloom is as fresh and fragrant to-day 
as it was on creation's morn. The grave hath no 
power over it. Though crucified, buried in a new 
tomb, hewn from the rock and guarded with armed 
soldiery, it rises and ascends to its Father, leading 
captivity itself captive. Forbear, then, to war 
against it. What you have that is true will sur- 
vive ; what you have that is false, must pass away, 
weep and howl as ye will. 



CHx^PTEE, XIX. 



S03IE PROGRESS. 



Mr. Morton, after the meeting was out, at Mr. 
Howard's invitation, accompanied us home and 
spent the remainder of the day and evening with 
us. I found him, as his sermon had led me to ex- 
pect, free from the usual cant of his profession, but 
serious and even enthusiastic. He appeared to be 
a man conscious that Heaven had raised him up 
for some important work, and he could not rest 
till he had accomplished it. He had himself been 
an unbeliever, but contrary to the usual practice 
of converted infidels, he was as liberal towards 
unbelievers, and as unrestrained in his intercourse 
with them, as though his own orthodoxy had never 
been questioned. I learned subsequently that his 
conduct in this respect, had induced some persons 
more remarkable for their zeal than their insight into 
the motives of human conduct, to suspect that he 
had never been really converted, but was at heart 
an unbeliever still ; but he was not a man to be 
disturbed by such ungenerous suspicions, by whom- 



168 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

soever they might be entertained. He kept on 
the even tenor of his way, acting always accord- 
ing to the promptings of his own heart, or his 
convictions of right, leaving the world to make its 
own comments. 

We conversed for some time on the various 
efforts which had been made at different periods 
by professed Free Thinkers and Philosophers, to 
overthrow Christianity, and their general ill suc- 
cess. This ill success I attempted to account for 
by the want of character in the Free Thinkers 
themselves, and by the general ignorance and stu- 
pidity of the multitude, who always had shown 
more alacrity in receiving the impositions of crafty 
priests and wily statesmen, than in listening to the 
instructions of philosophy and good sense. This I 
said somewhat against my conscience, chiefly for 
the purpose of drawing out Mr. Morton, and induc- 
ing him to give the opinions he himself might 
entertain. For, I had myself begun to suspect that 
religion had a deeper hold upon the human heart 
than unbelievers commonly imagine. 

" I think," said Mr. Morton, " the real cause of 
failure on the part of unbelievers in uprooting 
religion, lies much deeper than your remarks 
would imply. Religion is a fact in the natural 
history of man, since we find it wherever we find 
man. It must then proceed from a law of his 
nature, or a fundamental want of his soul. If this 
be so, its destruction would imply not merely a 



SOME PROGRESS. 169 

change of his views, but a radical change of his 
nature, his conversion into a different sort of 
being." 

" Man, then, you hold to be naturally religious ?" 

" I hold that the ideas or conceptions, which 
he attempts to embody and realize, in his forms 
of religious faith and worship, are intuitions of 
reason ; and without reason I suppose you would 
hardly contend man would be man." 

" Surely not. But I am not certain that these 
conceptions are intuitions of reason. One of these 
conceptions is that of the existence of God. But 
I have no conception of such an existence ; I can- 
not even conceive the possibility of such an ex- 
istence." 

" All in good time. We are concerning our- 
selves for the present with man, not with God. 
For the present at least, let us follow your favorite 
poet, 

6 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; 
The proper study of mankind is man.' 

Man, I take it, in his forms of religious faith and 
worship, seeks successfully or unsuccessfully, to 
realize his conceptions of the True, the Beautiful, 
and the Good. These conceptions are the funda- 
mental elements of religion; and they are also 
under one aspect the fundamental elements of 
reason, without which reason would not be reason." 
" Develope your meaning, if you please, at 
greater length." 



170 



CHARLES EL WOOD. 



" Without confidence, trust, hope, we could not 
live a moment, for we could perform no duty 
tending to our own preservation or that of society. 
But at the bottom of all confidence, trust, hope, 
there is always a conception of the true, and even 
an assumption that it is true that matters will or 
will not turn out thus and so. It is an unquestion- 
able fact that we are compelled by the very 
constitution of our intelligence to regard things, 
among other relations, always under the relation of 
true or false. All our reasonings imply it, and all 
our actions proceed on the assumption of it. Now 
we could not conceive of things as true or false, 
had we not a general conception of truth, of truth 
in itself. Why do I call this particular proposition 
true, and that one false ? Because this answers 
to my conception of truth, and that one does not. 
Ask the same question in relation to any number 
of propositions you please, and the same answer 
must be returned. This proves that my concep- 
tion is broader than any particular truth, nay, that 
it embraces universal truth. Without this concep- 
tion I could not perceive any difference between 
truth and falsehood ; I should have no standard, — 
true or false — by which to measure one or the 
other. This conception, conformity to which is to 
me the test of truth in all particular things, or 
propositions, is what I term the conception of the 
True in itself. 

" But we not only regard things under the rela^ 



SOME PROGRESS. 171 

tion of true or false, but we also regard them 
under the relation of beauty or its opposite. 
There must then be in the intelligence the con- 
ception of the Beautiful. If we have not this 
conception, I cannot understand whence come our 
emotions on beholding distant mountains with 
harmonious outlines, the tranquil lake sleeping 
sweetly beneath the moonbeams, the masculine 
form of man, the graceful form and delicate fea- 
tures of woman, an act of heroism, or of disinter- 
ested affection ; or those emotions we are conscious 
of when we ramble over the wild and sequestered 
scenes of nature ; survey piles of moss-covered 
ruins ; linger on spots where man has contended 
manfully for his rights ; enter the solemn temple 
where generations of our forefathers have wor- 
shipped, or stand among the dead and think of the 
nations which were but are not. Strike out from 
the soul the conception of the beautiful, poetry, 
painting, sculpture, all the fine arts with the mira- 
cles of which man has doubled his existence and 
embellished nature, would fall ; most of the gener- 
ous and touching sentiments of our nature would 
languish, and the universe would wear to our eyes 
one uniform, silent, drab-colored hue. 

" Suppose us deprived of the idea of the good, 
we could conceive no ground of preference. All 
events, all actions, all things, would be alike in- 
different. We could never say This is better than 
That. Useful and injurious, just and unjust, right 



172 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

and wrong, would be unmeaning terms. Life 
could have no purpose, exertion no aim. Exist- 
ence would be to us as non-existence. But this is 
not the case. We unquestionably do regard per- 
sons, events, actions and things under the relation 
of good or evil. We are ever asking, ' Who 
will show us any good ?' But in conceiving of 
things as good, we necessarily conceive of some- 
thing by virtue of which they are good, and the 
absence of which would leave them evil. We con- 
sequently have the conception of the Good in itself. 

" We have, then, these three ideas, the idea of 
the true, the idea of the beautiful, and that of the 
good. These ideas, since they have manifested 
themselves in the whole history of mankind, be- 
long to the race ; and as without them we could 
not be reasonable beings, we may term them con- 
stituent elements of the reason. But these ideas 
are not inactive. They are always struggling to 
realize themselves. We are ever asking ourselves, 
what is the true ? What is the beautiful ? What 
is the good ? and exerting ourselves to possess 
them. We have a deep craving for them. And 
this craving, perhaps, in the last analysis, resolves 
itself into a craving for the infinite. We crave 
the infinite, and this craving of the infinite, is 
under one of its aspects, the religious sentiment." 

" But do you think it true that all men have this 
craving for the infinite ? " 

" Are they ever satisfied with the finite ? The 



SOME PROGRESS. 173 

lamb crops its flowery food, lies down to rest, and 
ruminates in peace. Is it so with man ? Gratify- 
all his senses, lodge him in the marble palace, feast 
him on the rarest dainties of every clime, let music 
as voices from the invisible soothe him, flatter his 
ambition, let senates thrill with his eloquence, states 
and empires hang on his nod ; — power, wealth, 
fame, pleasure, fail to fill up the measure of his 
wants, and they leave him poor and needy, ever 
seeking what he has not, sighing for what lies still 
beyond him. Man is never satisfied. The chant 
of the poet is but one long monotonous wail of 
the soul weary of what it has, and looking to what 
it has not, and cannot reach. The artist can never 
transfer to his marble or his canvass the visions of 
beauty which haunt his soul, and make him burn 
with fruitless passion. The philosopher, poring 
over the volume open round and about or within 
him, till reason approaches the verge of insanity, 
is ever finding new riddles to rede, new hiero- 
glyphics to decipher; ever rages within him the 
c eternal thirst to know,' to pierce the darkness, 
leap through the unknown, and grasp the infinite. 
This universal dissatisfaction of the soul with what 
it has, this perpetual craving for what lies beyond 
and above it, this eternal upshooting towards the 
boundless and the perfect, is what I call, under 
one of its aspects, the religious sentiment, and this 
sentiment is universal, eternal and indestructible." 
" But admitting the existence of this sentiment, 



174 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

may we not regard it as the result of education ? 
May we not ascribe its origin to the fact, that in 
childhood and youth our heads are filled with words 
about the infinite, so that in all after life we are 
unable to satisfy ourselves with what is finite and 
earthly ? " 

"I should think not. Education has no creative 
power ; it can merely unfold and direct the powers 
which nature confers. It cannot make a poet of 
a horse, nor a mathematician of an ape. Educa- 
tion may undoubtedly do much towards determining 
the forms this sentiment shall wear, the positive in- 
stitutions in which it may be embodied ; but it 
cannot originate the tendency itself, unless we 
ascribe to it a power of completely altering, not 
merely the manifestations of a being, but also its 
permanent and indestructible nature. But even if 
education could produce the result in question, how 
comes it that man is the only race of beings known 
that so educates itself? Must it not result from 
something peculiar in the human race ? If so, it 
virtually amounts to the same thing. 

" Besides, if you form a conception of the 
finite, you must also of the infinite, for the two 
are correlative, and contemporary in the reason. 
Educated or uneducated, we all have the idea of 
the infinite, and, what is more, we cannot get rid 
of it even if we would." 

" Why not ? " 

" Do you not conceive of yourself as finite ? " 



SOME PROGRESS. 175 

" Certainly." 

" And what is it that you say, when .you say 
you are finite ? " 

" That I am limited, bounded." 

" Not infinite. You see, sir, that you presup- 
pose the idea of the infinite, the moment you un- 
dertake to describe yourself as finite." 

" But if all men have the conception of the 
infinite, and a craving for it, if all men have the 
conceptions of the true, the beautiful, and the good, 
which you say are the fundamental elements of 
religion, how happens it, that all men have not a 
religion, and in fact one and the same religion ? " 

" Your question will be answered if you distin- 
guish between the religious sentiment and the forms 
of faith and worship by which men seek to realize 
it. The sentiment is natural, invariable and inde- 
structible ; but the form is artificial, variable and 
transitory. We are religious beings by virtue 
of the fact that we have the conceptions of the 
true, the beautiful and the good ; we have a reli- 
gion only when we have embodied these concep- 
tions in an institution, such as was Judaism, Greek 
and "Roman polytheism, or, during the middle ages, 
Catholicism. When the prevailing religion, that 
is, the dominant religious institution of the epoch, 
fails to represent all that we can conceive of the 
true, the beautiful and the good, we break away 
from it, and are for the time being without religion. 

" Take your own case. You had all the con- 



176 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

ceptions which are the elements of religion, but as 
you did not find at the moment you began your 
inquiries, a religious institution which embodied 
them all to the satisfaction of your understanding, 
you doubted of all religion, and became an unbe- 
liever. You are not yet able to combine these 
elements in a manner to satisfy yourself, and 
therefore, though I hold you to be religious, you 
have as yet no religion. 

" The reason why the prevailing institution does 
not satisfy you, is either in the fact that you do not 
fully comprehend it, or that your ideal is above it. 
You may have seen the religion of your country 
from a low and unfavorable point of sight, and may 
have therefore inferred that it embodies less of 
truth, beauty and goodness than it actually does. 
In this case it is not that religion you have rejected, 
but something else to which you have given its 
name. 

" Admit, however, that you fully comprehend it, 
perceive it precisely as it is, and are really able to 
take in more of truth, beauty and goodness than it 
represents, still you have one or two inquiries to 
make before you can be justified in rejecting 
Christianity. Does what passes for Christianity 
fully represent the ideal of Jesus ? Is it equal to 
what Jesus designed to institute ? Is it a perfect 
realization of the conception of Jesus ? If not, — 
and I am sure that it is not, — then you should seek 
to ascertain the conception of Jesus, the amount of 
truth, beauty and goodness he contemplated." 



SOME PROGRESS. 177 

" And if that be below my ideal ? " 
" Then you must turn prophet, and preach a 
new religion. You have no other alternative. If 
you will do this, and show me that you really com- 
prehend more of truth, beauty and goodness, than 
Jesus did, I will become one of your disciples, 
and, if need be, follow you to the cross." 



12 



CHAPTER XX. 

GOD. 

" But all this, though very well, fails to reach my 
case. Grant I have the conceptions of which you 
speak, still I have no conception of God, and with- 
out God, 1 can hardly be religious. I not only have 
no conception of God, but I cannot even form one^" 

" If you mean to say that you have no definit$L 
conception of God, that you cannot define the idea 
of God, you doubtless are correct. But if you 
mean that you can have no conception of God, I 
must beg leave to differ from you." 

" But what conception can I form of God ? 
What is God ? " 

" He is spirit." 

" But what is spirit ? " 

" Spirit is something to be described chiefly by 
negatives ; we can easily tell what it is not, but 
not so easily what it is. Nevertheless, I apprehend 
that you may attain to a proximate idea of what it 
is, if you attend to the manner in which we com- 
monly use the word spirit. 

" The use of this word spirit, is various. We 



GOD. 179 

say the spirit of the remark, and a spirited remark, 
spirit of nature, spirit of the universe, spirit of 
truth, spirit of man, a^man of spirit, spirit of the 
affair, spirit of wine, &c. Now in all these and 
the like cases, I apprehend that we use the word 
to designate the reality and force of the thing or 
subject of which we speak. ' The letter killeth, but 
the spirit giveth life.' The mere form or verbal 
enactment of the legislative authority, is not the 
law ; the intent, the reality, the spirit of the enact- 
ment, that which is actually intended by the legis- 
lative authority, is the law, obedience to which 
gives life. 

" We say c the spirit of his assertion.' In this 
case we make more or less clearly in our minds, a 
distinction between the form of the assertion, the 
literal words used, technically interpreted, and the 
general scope and meaning, the real intention. 
Here the force and reality of the assertion, the 
real thing asserted, is what we would designate by 
the phrase, ' spirit of his assertion.' 

" By a chemical process we extract a substance 
from corn, which, when diluted with water, we 
call ardent spirits. Here again is the same radi- 
cal meaning of the word. We have extracted the 
force, the strength, the essence of the corn, and 
we term it spirit. Etymological research into the 
word, would confirm this result, but I waive it as 
unnecessary. 

" Now the human mind is, to say the least, so 



180 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

constituted, that it must believe that what is, is ; 
that a thing cannot both exist and not exist at the 
same time. That which exists it must believe is 
something. In all objects which we see we recog- 
nise an existence. We do not believe that the 
universe is a mere apparition, a mere sense- 
shadow. Something is at the bottom of it. Some- 
thing lies back of all appearances and shines out 
in all appearances. The phenomena around us 
may change their colors or their forms, they may 
now be putting forth the buds and blossoms of 
spring, or wearing the thick foliage of summer, 
or the rich and varied and golden hues of autumn, 
or stand in the chilling nakedness of winter ; yet 
amid all these changes, we seem to ourselves to 
recognise something which changes not, — a per- 
manent, indestructible Essence, the same yester- 
day, to-day and forever. This something is what 
we mean by Reality. Amid all these appearances, 
these sense-shadows, these flitting apparitions, 
these perpetual changes, we believe there is some- 
thing Real, Permanent, Unchangeable. 

" Now this real, permanent, unchangeable 
Something, we believe to be in everything which 
exists, and to be that which exists, and only that. It 
is always the thing. That which is not real, per- 
manent, unchangeable, is to us no existence, no 
being, but a mere shadow, an unsubstantial form, 
a nothing. The reality, the permanent substance, 
the living force of that of which we speak, that 



GOD. 181 

which constitutes its essence, and makes it what 
it is, is then, if I mistake not, what we mean by 
its spirit. The spirit of a man, is the real, the 
permanent, the substantial man, contradistinguish- 
ed from the form, the shadow, or changing appa- 
rition which environs him. Take what is real, 
substantial, unchangeable in man, that which con- 
stitutes him man wherever he is, and keeps him 
man in spite of all the modifications of disposition or 
character to which he may be subjected, in time 
or space, and you have the spirit of man ; that is, 
you have the reality, the ground, the substance of 
the being called man, so far forth as he contains 
them in himself. 

" Extend your thoughts now from man to the 
universe. Penetrate beyond and beneath all 
forms and shadows, all that is changeable and 
transitory, that is not, but appears ; seize what is 
real, substantial, what constitutes the Ground and 
Reality of all existences, that which remains un- 
changed amidst all changes, which 

' Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent; ' 

and you have what may be termed the Spirit of 
the Universe, the Life, the Essence, the Ground, 
the Living Force of all that is. 

" It follows from this that the Spiritual is always 



182 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

the Real, the Substantial, in opposition to those who 
regard it as chimerical, as merely imaginary. 
Hence also that which we regard as the real, the 
substantial, is always the Invisible. That which 
is seen, which we examine with our senses, is 
never to us, did we but know it, the Thing itself. 
It is mere appearance, shadow, pointing to a reality 
back of it, a substance which sends it forth, but 
which it is not. We always call that which is 
permanent, immutable, in the thing, — not its 
apparition, — the Thing itself, and this always 
transcends the senses, — is transcendental. Spirit, 
is in fact, the only reality of which we ever do or 
ever can form any conception. Men are materi- 
alists only because they misinterpret or misname 
their own beliefs. 

" Now, God is Spirit. He is then the Life, the 
Being, the Force, the Substance of whatever is. 
In light he is the light, in life he is the life ; in 
soul he is the soul, in reason he is the reason, in 
truth he is the truth, in cause he is causality, 
in beauty he is the beautiful ; in goodness he is 
the good — God. # Wherever we attain to that 
which is real, which absolutely exists, which pos- 
sesses a real, living force, we attain to God. In 

* I am not sure but I am indebted to an extract which I 
have somewhere met with from a Hindoo writing for the 
thought here expressed, as well as in part for the language, 
but I have no leisure at present to make the necessary 
reference. 



GOD. 183 

all these forms, in all these changing objects, 
whether in the natural world or the moral, which 
are forever passing and repassing before our eyes, 
is there not always one thing which we seek ? 
Amidst all these mutations which oppress and 
sadden our hearts, and make us at times exclaim, 

1 This world is all a fleeting show/ 

do we not seek the Permanent, and that winch 
changes not ? In these forms of faith which dis- 
tract us, these creeds, dogmas, theories of the 
moral and intellectual world, so full of vanity, 
ever varying and imparting life never, seek we 
not something which is not vain, varying, distract- 
ing, which is not dead, nor subject to death, but 
living and life-giving ? Wearied and worn with 
the endless windings of our pilgrimage, finding our 
journey ever beginning and never ending, that 
toil, toil, eternal task-work is our lot, sigh we not 
for deliverance, to be freed from our labors, and 
to find repose ? Weary and heavy laden we 
would throw off our burdens and be at rest. The 
soul cries out for an Ineffable Repose. Now, what 
we seek in all this, is God. He is always the 
one thing we are seeking after. Amidst the 
variable and the transitory he is the Immutable 
and the Permanent. Amidst clashing and distract- 
ing forms of faith, he is the Truth ; to the soul 
aspiring to be wise and good, he is Wisdom and 
Goodness ; to the weary and heavy laden he is 



184 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

Rest, Repose. In all things we seek a Reality, 
and all Reality in the last analysis is God. 

" God is to ns the invisible Substance, the in- 
visible Reality of all that arrests our senses, excites 
our minds or touches our hearts ; the Invisible 
Universe of which this outward, visible universe is 
the shadow, the apparition, or manifestation. Its 
life, being, cause, substance, reality are in Him, in 
whom we, as a part of it, c live and move and 
have our being.' 

" To the question, then, what is God ? the best 
answer I can give, is, that he is the Unseen, Un- 
changeable, and Permanent Reality of this mighty 
apparition which men call nature, or the universe. 
You may say that this answer is vague and unsat- 
isfactory, that it defines nothing. Be it so. I 
began by saying God cannot be defined. He is 
indefinable, because he is infinite, and infinite is 
that which cannot be defined. Nevertheless this 
answer I think, with the remarks I have made, 
will help you, not to comprehend the Incompre- 
hensible, but to apprehend it." 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 



" I think I catch some glimmering of what you 
mean ; but allowing that your answer to the ques- 
tion, what is God, is satisfactory, still I wish it 
demonstrated that there is a God." 

" I can hardly be expected to give you a com- 
plete demonstration in the course of a single con- 
versation. What I have already said, would be 
satisfactory to my own mind ; but if it is not to 
yours, we will look at the problem a little closer. 
I suppose, if I make it as certain that there is a 
God, as you are that you exist, it will answer your 
purpose ? " 

u Yes. I shall be satisfied with that degree of 
certainty.'" 

" I have already, I believe, established the fact 
that we have the conceptions of the true, the beau- 
tiful, and the good, and that we should cease to be 
men if we had them not ; or in other words, that 
divested of these conceptions, reason would not be 
reason." 

" That point I consider settled." 



186 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

"If we are compelled by the very constitution 
of our being to entertain the idea of the true, for 
instance, we must believe that something is true. 
If I believe something is true, I must believe in the 
true in itself, for it is only by means of the con- 
ception of the true in itself, that I am able to con- 
ceive of any particular truth. Besides, I have 
shown that the conception of the true, as a con- 
ception of the reason, is a conception of the true 
in itself. Now the true in itself, is necessarily, 
universally and eternally true. For, if we could 
conceive any condition under which it would not 
be true, then its truth would depend on conditions, 
and the true in itself, would be proved to be not 
the true in itself. 

" Now., when we say a thing is true, we say that 
it is, and is just what it purports to be. That which 
has no existence, can have no truth. The truth of 
a matter cannot exceed its existence. To say a 
thing exists is to say that it is something, a reality, 
a substance. When therefore we say something is 
true, we say something exists, that there is a sub- 
stance.'" 

" But I do not see that you are making much 
progress." 

" Be patient. We have now found that inas- 
much as we have the conception of the true, we 
have also the conception of substance. But we 
have the conception of the true in itself, that is, of 
the universally and eternally and unconditionally 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 187 

true. Then, if I am right in identifying the true 
with substance, in saying that the true must, so far 
forth as it is true, exist, be a reality, then we must 
admit the existence of substance in itself; that 
is, a substance which requires no conditions out of 
itself in order to be a substance, and which there- 
fore is always and everywhere a substance, that is, 
absolute substance." 

" Do you mean by substance matter ? " 
" I might ask you what you mean by matter, but 
let that pass. I mean by substance that which 
really exists, which is a reality. Whether it be mat- 
ter or spirit, is not now the point of inquiry. Some 
have supposed that what we term matter and spirit, 
are neither of them substances, but two modes by 
which absolute substance manifests itself. But this 
by the way. We have now found by analyzing 
the conception of the reason, the conception of 
absolute substance. That is, a substance which is 
substance in itself, containing in itself the grounds 
of its own existence. It is therefore uncreated 
and independent. If it were created it w T ould be 
a substance only under certain relations, and the 
idea of absolute substance would have to be car- 
ried further back and predicated of the creator. 
The very conception of absolute substance pre- 
cludes all necessity of any conditions of its exist- 
ence, — all idea of its depending on aught beside 
itself to be, or to be what it is. 
" This absolute substance must also be one, and 



188 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

can be but one. Two absolutes were as much an 
absurdity, as two infinities, or two almighties. It 
is not a mere aggregate or totality, made up of 
parts. If we suppose it made up of parts, we must 
suppose each of the parts an absolute substance, 
and then a part would be equal to the whole ; or 
we must suppose none of the parts are absolute, 
and then it would be as impossible to obtain the 
absolute from their union, or aggregation, as it 
would be the infinite from the union of an indefi- 
nite number of units. The absolute then can exist 
only in unity, and as the substance is absolute 
substance, it of course must be one and one only. 

" This substance is also a cause. There can be 
no cause without a substance, unless nothing be 
capable of producing something. That every cause 
is a substance, that is to say, a real existence, 
nobody denies ; that every substance, or real exist- 
ence, of which we conceive, is also a cause, may 
not perhaps at first sight be quite so evident ; but 
I think I can make it out. 

" We have in our minds unquestionably the 
idea of cause. By cause we do not understand 
merely invariable antecedence, as a certain phi- 
losopher pretends, but an active, productive force. 
We conceive of various causes, but of all causes 
as either relative or absolute, that is, as causes 
within certain limits and under certain conditions, 
or as a cause without limits, without conditions, 
always and everywhere a cause. The relative 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 189 

implies the absolute. The absolute can be found 
only in the absolute. The absolute cause then 
must be identified with absolute substance. The 
absolute substance, is then absolute cause. 

" Moreover, I know substance only under the 
relation of cause. My real conception of all ex- 
istences, is of them as so many causes. I know 
myself only as a cause. I become acquainted with 
myself, I may say attain to the conception of my 
personal existence, only by surprizing myself in 
the act of doing or causing something. I will 
to raise my arm ; I attend to what is said to me, 
to ,the impressions made on my organs of sense. 
Now in every act of volition, of willing, of atten- 
tion, there is an actor, a cause, and this cause is 
precisely what I mean when I say I, myself. J 
will, I attend. I know myself then as a power 
capable of producing effects, that is, as a cause. 

" I know the external world only as something 
which produces effects on me, or on itself. Its 
various objects produce impressions on my organs 
of sense, and I see them producing certain effects 
on one another, and I can ascertain their existence 
no further than I can find them producing effects ; 
consequently I know them only as causes. But they 
are not absolute causes. I see them limit one 
another, and they are also limited, up to a certain 
extent, by my causality. Nor am I an absolute 
cause. I cannot do whatever I will. My power 
is bounded on every side, and I am not more cer- 



190 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

tain of my causality itself, than I am of my weak- 
ness. 

" But if both nature and myself are mere limit- 
ed causes, causes only within certain limits, and 
under certain conditions, the absolute cause, which 
our reason demands, must be back of both nature 
and us, a substance more ultimate than either. It 
can be found only in the absolute substance, which 
is not only absolute substance, but absolute cause. 
I thus obtain the conclusion, not only that absolute 
substance is absolute cause, but that it is something 
above and independent of nature and of myself; 
therefore that neither nature nor myself is the 
absolute cause. 

" I have now established the existence of one, 
absolute,, original, independent substance, and 
which is also absolute cause. Now our radical 
idea of God, is that of a cause, creator. Take 
away from God the idea of cause, and he would 
not be God. In establishing then the existence of 
a universal and absolute cause, one, and inde- 
pendent, have I not established the existence of 
God ? " 

" Not to my satisfaction. Before you have 
finished your work, you must establish the fact 
that this absolute cause, is not only a cause, but 
also intelligent, and personal. For as yet I do not 
see that you have advanced beyond pantheism." 

" There is nothing pantheistic in the views I 
have thus far advanced. Pantheism is of two 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 191 

sorts : one, a low sort of pantheism, identifies God 
with nature ; this is properly atheism : the other 
sinks nature in God, and recognises no existence 
but that of God ; this was the pantheism of the 
famous Spinoza, which some people have been 
foolish enough to call atheism. Spinoza was so 
absorbed in the idea of God, that he could see 
nothing else. But let this pass. The personality 
of this absolute cause, by which I suppose is meant 
the fact that it is not a mere fatal cause, but a free 
intentional cause, I think, follows as a necessary 
induction from its independence. It is an absolute 
cause ; nothing lies back of it compelling it to act. 
Its motive to activity must be drawn from itself, 
and I cannot conceive a cause acting freely, from 
its own suggestions, unless it wills to act. Its in- 
dependence and unity, would therefore to my 
mind imply its personality in the only sense in 
which personality can be predicated of God. But 
I do not insist on this. 

" The intelligence of God, for I shall henceforth 
speak of the absolute cause, under this title, is 
sometimes deduced from the fact that intelligence 
appears in the effect ; but on this argument I do not 
rely. I get at his intelligence by another process. 

" The nature, the characteristic of reason is in- 
telligence. The reason not only has the power to 
know, but actually knows. It is for us the prin- 
ciple of intelligence. All that we know at all we 
know by virtue of the reason. It is by its light, 



192 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

that I perceive my own existence, that I am con- 
scious of what passes within me, that I take cogni- 
zance of my thoughts, my sensations, passions, 
emotions, affections. On its authority I affirm that 
I exist, that you exist, that the external world 
exists. All the light I have comes from it ; and 
its authority always suffices me. 

" This is not all. You and I both believe the rea- 
son to be authoritative. You try to make me believe 
that reason determines so and so, and you feel that 
if you succeed in making me see the point as you 
do I must admit it. You would think me a mad- 
man if I denied the relations of numbers, or re- 
fused to admit plain, legitimate, logical deductions 
from acknowledged premises. All mankind do the 
same. What each believes to be reasonable, he 
believes all ought to accept. 

" Nobody ever asks for any higher authority 
than the reason. What we call demonstration is 
only stripping a subject of its envelopes, and show- 
ing it to the reason as it is. If when seen in its 
nakedness the reason approves it, we say it is de- 
monstrated to be true ; if the reason disapproves 
it, we say it is demonstrated to be false." 

" It is hardly necessary to be thus particular in 
establishing the authority of reason with me, for I 
have never questioned it. Religious people are 
those who deny the authority of reason." 

" Nevertheless, sir, I am about to make an appli- 
cation of the reason from which, if you are not 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 193 

previously prepared, you will recoil. But assum- 
ing, for the present, the authority of the reason, I 
shall insist on your yielding to every legitimate 
application of it. Now, we speak of reason as 
individual, as though it were yours or mine ; but 
nevertheless, I believe it declares that it is not in- 
dividual. Were it individual it were personal, and 
we could control its conceptions. But all its con- 
ceptions have in fact a character of necessity. We 
cannot control them. We cannot make it affirm 
what we will. It declares two and two are four, 
and we have no power of will to make it declare 
otherwise. 

" Nay, more, we always look upon the concep- 
tions of the reason as possessing authority beyond 
the sphere of individual consciousness. They all 
bear the character of universality and absoluteness. 
They transcend time and space. We regard jus- 
tice, for instance, as something eternal and immu- 
table. What is just now we believe was always 
just and always will be just. Its character of jus- 
tice is independent of time and place, and of the 
individuals who entertain the idea of justice. So 
of truth, as I have already shown. The concep- 
tions of the reason therefore are not relative, de- 
pendent and temporary, but independent, eternal, 
and absolute. If the reason reveals its conceptions 
as absolute, it then reveals itself as absolute. On 
the same authority then that I affirm my exist- 
ence, I affirm the absoluteness of the reason. 
13 



194 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

. " Now, the reason is something or it is nothing. 
If it were nothing, a non-entity, could it reveal 
itself, impose its laws upon my understanding, and 
speak to me a clear and independent voice in spite 
of my will ? I have only the reason by which to 
determine the fact that I entertain the ideas of the 
true, the beautiful, and the good, and I have its 
authority equally express, that it is a reality, and 
the highest reality I am acquainted with. If then 
it be an absolute reality, as it declares itself to 
be, then, it must be identical with the absolute 
substance, for I have shown that there cannot be 
two absolutes. Then the absolute substance, is not 
only absolute, cause, but absolute reason. The 
essence of reason is intelligence ; absolute reason 
must be absolute intelligence, intelligence in itself. 
God then is not a mere blind cause, but an intelli- 
gent cause, intelligence in itself." 

" But do you mean to assert that my intelligence 
is absolute, that my reason is God ? " 

" No, sir. I mean to assert no such thing. I 
mean merely to assert that the reason which makes 
its appearance in us, and whose scattered rays 
constitute our intelligence, is itself above us, and 
independent of us. When it appears in us it is 
of course subjected to human conditions, which are 
frailty and error. But at the same time, it reveals 
itself as stretching beyond us, and assures us that in 
that world into which it permits us to look as through 
a glass darkly, it possesses a character of absolute 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 195 

intelligence. Who is there to whom reason does 
not reveal itself as containing more light than he 
has beheld, more truth than he has comprehended ? 
It is not reason subjected to the infirmities of the 
flesh, but reason taken absolutely, reason in its 
fulness, in its Godhead, of which I speak. I speak 
of it in its absoluteness, because it assures me 
that it is absolute, and if I may not trust it when 
it gives me this assurance, I know not what right 
I have to rely on it when it assures me of my own 
existence. 

" Reason once established in its absoluteness, 
the intelligence of God is demonstrated. From 
his intelligence and independence, I think the in- 
duction of his personality follows as a matter of 
course. His freedom is asserted in his indepen- 
dence. He is independent and absolute. No 
power out of himself then can force him to act.' 
He cannot be subjected to any external necessity. 
All the necessity he can be under of acting must 
be in himself. He is then perfectly free. He 
need not act unless he please ; and he may act as 
he pleases. Conceive a being thus free, and at the 
same time absolute intelligence, and tell me if it 
be possible for him to act without self-conscious- 
ness, without knowing that he acts and wherefore 
he acts ? Must he not from the very nature of 
the case act from volition, because he wills to 
act ? Now, a being that is self-conscious, who 
knows what he does, and acts from volition, it 



196 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

strikes me, must possess personality in the highest 
degree. I am a person no further than I am a 
free intentional causality. But God is an infinitely 
free intentional causality. Therefore he must be 
infinitely more of a person than I am." 

" But you have as yet clothed your God with no 
moral attributes." 

" All in good time. But beware how you un- 
dertake to cut the Divinity up into attributes. He 
is one. He is, as we have thus found him, abso- 
lute substance, an infinite, free, intelligent, inten- 
tional causality. Would you determine whether 
he is just or not, you must descend into the reason, 
and inquire whether you have the absolute idea of 
justice. You will find this idea, as we have 
already found the absolute idea of goodness. The 
absolute can reside only in the absolute. God 
then is not only absolute substance, an indepen- 
dent, free, intelligent causality, but he is also just 
and good. You must go through with all the 
absolute ideas of the reason, and when you have 
exhausted these you have determined the number 
and character of the attributes of the Deity." 

" I am not certain that I have followed you 
through all the steps of your analysis and induc- 
tion, but if I have, and rightly comprehended you, 
you have indicated a process by which the exist- 
ence of God may be as satisfactorily demonstrated 
as any article of human belief. But you must 
not expect me to acquiesce at once. I must have 



THE DEMONSTRATION. 197 

time to reflect, and to go over the subject in my 
own mind. I can hardly persuade myself as yet, 
that you have not committed some mistake, for 
your conclusion seems too evident not to be 
doubtful." 

" Take all the time you please. You say 
rightly I have indicated a process. I have only 
indicated it. To give a complete demonstration 
would require more time than I have at my com- 
mand, and more patience than I fear you have to 
bestow upon so dry, though so important a sub- 
ject." 

" But, Mr. Morton, though you have obtained a 
God, I do not see that he has done anything. 
How do you demonstrate the fact that he creates?" 



CHAPTER XXII. 



CREATION. 



" You will bear in mind, that we have found 
God as a cause, not a potential cause, occasionally 
a cause, accidentally a cause, but absolute cause, 
cause in itself, always a cause, and everywhere a 
cause. Now a cause that causes nothing is no 
cause at all. If then God be a cause, he must 
cause something, that is, create. Creation then is 
necessary." 

" Do you mean to say that God lies under a 
necessity of creating ?" 

" God lies under nothing, for he is over all, and 
independent of all. The necessity of which I 
speak is not a foreign necessity, but a necessity 
of his own nature. What I mean is, he cannot 
be what he is without creating. It would be a 
contradiction in terms to call him a cause, and to 
say that he causes nothing." 

" But out of what does God create the world ? 
Out of nothing, as our old catechisms have it ?" 

" Not out of nothing certainly, but out of himself, 
out of his own fulness. You may form an idea of 



CREATION. 199 

creation by noting what passes in the bosom of 
your own consciousness. I will to raise my arm. 
My arm may be palsied, or a stronger than mine 
may hold it down, so that I cannot raise it. Nev- 
ertheless I have created something ; to wit, the will 
or intention to raise it. In like manner as I by 
an effort of my will or an act of my causality, 
create a will or intention, does God create the 
world. The world is God's will or intention, 
existing in the bosom of his consciousness, as my 
will or intention exists in the bosom of mine. 

" Now, independent of me, my will or intention 
has no existence. It exists, is a reality no further 
than I enter into it ; and it ceases to exist, vanishes 
into nothing the moment I relax the causative 
effort which gave it birth. So of the world. In- 
dependent of God it has no existence. All the 
life and reality it has are of God. It exists no 
further than he enters into it, and it ceases to 
exist, becomes a nonentity the moment he with- 
draws or relaxes the creative effort which calls it 
into being. 

" This, if I mistake not, strikingly illustrates the 
dependence of the universe, of all worlds and 
beings on God. They exist but by his will. He 
willed, and they were ; commanded, and they 
stood fast. He has but to will and they are 
not ; to command, and the heavens roll together 
as a scroll, or disappear as the morning mist be- 
fore the rising sun. This is easily seen to be 



200 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

true because he is their life, their being ; — in him, 
says an apostle, 6 we live and move and have our 
being.' 

" The question is sometimes asked, where is 
the universe ? Where is your resolution, inten- 
tion ? In the bosom of your consciousness. So 
the universe, being God's will or intention, exists 
in the consciousness of the Deity. The bosom of 
the infinite Consciousness is its place, its residence, 
its home. God then is all round and within it, as 
you are all round, and within your intention. 
Here is the omnipresence of the Deity. You 
cannot go where God is not, unless you cease to 
exist. Not because God fills all space, as we 
sometimes say, thus giving him as it were exten- 
sion, but because he embosoms ail space, as we 
embosom our thoughts in our own consciousness. 

" This view of creation, also, shows us the 
value of the universe, and teaches us to respect it. 
It is God's will, God's intention, and is divine, so 
far forth as it really exists, and therefore is holy, 
and should be reverenced. Get at a man's inten- 
tions, and you get at his real character. A man's 
intentions are the revelations of himself; they 
show you what the man is. The universe is the 
revelation of the Deity. So far as we read and 
understand it, do we read and understand God. 
When I am penetrating into the heavens and 
tracing the revolutions of the stars, I am learning 
the will of God ; when I penetrate the earth and 



CREATION. 201 

explore its strata, study the minuter particles of 
matter and their various combinations, I am mas- 
tering the science of theology ; when I listen to 
the music of the morning songsters, I am listening 
to the voice of God ; and it is his beauty I see 
when my eye runs over the varied landscape or 
c the flower enameled mead.' 

" You see here the sacred character which at- 
taches to all science, shadowed forth through all 
antiquity, by the right to cultivate it being claimed 
for the priests alone. But every man should be a 
priest ; and the man of science, who does not per- 
ceive that he is also a priest, but half understands 
his calling. In ascertaining these laws of nature, 
as you call them, you are learning the ways of 
God. Put off your shoes then when you enter the 
temple of science, for you enter the sanctuary of 
the Most High. 

" But man is a still fuller manifestation of the 
Deity. He is superior to all outward nature. 
Sun and stars pale before a human soul. The 
powers of nature, whirlwinds, tornados, cataracts, 
lightnings, earthquakes, are weak before the power 
of thought, and lose all their terrific grandeur in 
presence of the struggles of passion. Man with 
a silken thread turns aside the lightning and chains 
up the harmless bolt. Into man enters more of the 
fulness of the Divinity, for in his own likeness God 
made man. The study of man then is still more 
the study of the Divinity, and the science of man 



202 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

becomes a still nearer approach to the science of 
God. 

" This is not all. Viewed in this light what new 
worth and sacredness attaches to this creature man, 
on whom kings, priests and nobles have for so 
many ages trampled with sacrilegious feet. Whoso 
wrongs a man defaces the image of God, desecrates 
a temple of the living God, and is guilty not merely 
of a crime but of a sin. Indeed, all crimes be- 
come sins, all offences against man, offences against 
God. Hear this, ye wrong-doers, and know that it 
is not from your feeble brother only, that ye have 
to look for vengeance. Hear this, ye wronged and 
down-trodden ; and know that God is wronged in 
that ye are wronged, and his omnipotent arm shall 
redress you, and punish your oppressors. Man is 
precious in the sight of God, and God will vindi- 
cate him." 

" All this is very fine, but it strikes me that you 
identify the Deity with his works. You indeed call 
him a cause, but he causes or creates, if I under- 
stand you, only by putting himself forth. Inde- 
pendent of him, his works have no reality. He 
is their life, being, substance. Is not this Pan- 
theism ? " 

" Not at all. God is indeed the life, being, sub- 
stance of all his works, yet is he independent of 
his works. I am in my intention, and my inten- 
tion is nothing any further than I enter into it ; but 
nevertheless my intention is not me ; I have the 



CREATION. 203 

complete control over it. It does not exhaust me. 
It leaves me with all my creative energy, free to 
create anew as I please. So of God. Creation 
does not exhaust him. His works are not neces- 
sary to his being, they make up no part of his life. 
He retains all his creative energy, and may put 
it forth anew as seems to him good. Grant he 
stands in the closest relation to his works ; he 
stands to them in the relation of a cause to an 
effect, not in the relation "of identity, as pantheism 
supposes." 

" But waiving the charge of pantheism, it would 
seem from what you have said that creation must 
be as old as the Creator. What then will you do 
with the Mosaic cosmogony, which supposes crea- 
tion took place about six thousand years ago ? " 

" I leave the Mosaic cosmogony where I find it. 
As to the inference that creation must be as old as 
the Creator, I would remark, that a being cannot 
be a creator till he creates, and as God was always 
a creator, always then must there have been a 
creation ; but it does not follow from this that cre- 
ation must have always assumed its present form, 
much less that this globe in its present state must 
have existed from all eternity. It may have been, 
for aught we know, subjected to a thousand revo- 
lutions and transformations, and the date of its 
habitation by man, may indeed have been no longer 
ago than Hebrew chronology asserts. 

" But much of this difficulty about the date of 



204 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

creation arises from supposing that creation must 
have taken place in time. But the creations of 
God are not in time but in eternity. Time begins 
with creation, and belongs to created nature. With 
God there is no time, as there is no space. He 
transcends time and space. He inhabiteth eter- 
nity, and is both time and space. When we speak 
of beginning in relation to the origin of the uni- 
verse, we should refer to the source whence it 
comes, not to the time when it came. Its begin- 
ning is not in time but in God, and is now as much 
as it ever was. 

" You should think of the universe as something 
which is, not as something which was. God did 
not, strictly speaking, make the world, finish it, 
and then leave it. He makes it, he constitutes it 
now. Regard him therefore not, if I may bor- 
row the language of Spinoza, as its ; temporary 
and transient cause, but as its permanent and in- 
dwelling cause ; ' that is, not as a cause which 
effects, and then passes off from his works, to re- 
main henceforth in idleness, or to create new 
worlds ; but as a cause which remains in his works, 
ever producing them, and constituting them by 
being present in them, their life, being and sub- 
stance. Take this view, and you will never trouble 
yourself with the question whether the world was 
created, six thousand, or six million of years ago." 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

RESULTS. 

This conversation with Mr. Morton threw some 
light on the great problems with which I had la- 
bored, and convinced me that the philosophy I had 
hitherto cherished was superficial and far from 
giving a complete and satisfactory account of the 
actual facts of human nature. I had done great 
injustice to man in reducing him to five senses and 
the operations of the understanding. There was 
more in him than I had seen. There were facts 
of his nature which could be traced to no empiri- 
cal origin, transcendental facts, inherent in the 
reason itself, and which it would by no means 
answer to leave out of the account. 

Mr. Morton had assumed man to be naturally 
religious. Was he not right in this ? How else 
could I account for the existence of religion as a 
fact of human history ? Religion I find every- 
where in history. No nation, tribe or horde, how- 
ever enlightened, ignorant or savage, has as yet 
been discovered without some form of religious 
worship. Go where you will, you find the priest 



206 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

and the altar, man seeking to keep open some kind 
of communication with superior powers. 

Nor is this all. Religion is not a mere unpro- 
ductive fact in our history. Of all sentiments, the • 
religious sentiment appears to be the strongest, and 
to exert the widest and most absolute dominion 
over the human race. At its bidding hostile armies 
lay down their arms, and meet and embrace as 
brothers ; at its voice kings and tyrants tremble on 
their thrones ; the mother offers up her son in sac- 
rifice, and the virgin her chastity. Singular that 
a mere accidental fact, having no root in human 
nature, should be thus powerful, and so sway the 
passions, interests and affections of mankind ! 

No man is entirely free from the workings of 
this sentiment. Even I myself, in my doubts and 
unbelief, felt the need of holding intercourse with 
powers above me ; and there were times when I 
could almost kneel down and pray. A poor mother 
saw her child fall into the river : she rushed in 
after it, and did all she could to rescue it, but in 
vain. She saw she could do no more, and that the 
child must drown. In an agony of despair, she 
stretched out her hands and exclaimed, " O thou 
great Unknown, save my child ! " Did she not 
utter the voice of nature ? In fact does there not 
always go with us a sense of the presence of an 
invisible being to whom we stand in certain unde- 
fined relations ? When we fancy that we are 
alone, when solemn silence reigns around us, and 



RESULTS. 207 

all is still, do we not fear and tremble, and start we 
know not at what ? Does it not seem to us that 
we are not alone, but standing as it were before a 
dread Presence ? 

Then also there is the sense of insufficiency. I 
am oppressed with a sense of my insufficiency for 
myself. I start in life with high hopes and gener- 
ous aims. I resolve to lead a life of strict virtue ; 
but some how or other I am perpetually failing. 
I have yielded to temptation, and am expelled from 
the garden of innocence. For a time I weep, but 
soon I recover myself, resolve to try again ; and 
again I fail. I see an excellence I cannot reach, 
approve a good, from which, though I struggle to 
gain it, I am ever departing. What shall I do ? I 
feel the need of some succoring being to extend 
me an arm, that though I stumble I may not fall 
utterly. All of our race, who have attained to 
any experience, I apprehend, have felt this painful 
sense of insufficiency, that " it is not in man that 
walketh to direct his steps." Hence the universal 
demand for spiritual aid, for a communication with 
the Powers above, that we may obtain assistance 
to wash out our sins, and to enable us to maintain 
our integrity for the future. 

This feeling, I apprehend, lies at the bottom of 
all worship, and has given rise to all the rites and 
ceremonies of religion. From the consciousness 
of sin, the need of atoning for it, and the need of 
divine aid in maintaining a holy life, have arisen 



208 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

the various sacrifices of man, animals, fruits and 
flowers, which make up so great a part of all the 
religions of antiquity. Men did not submit to 
them because priests enjoined them ; but because 
there was a deep want of the soul which demanded 
them. The form which they assumed, was, per- 
haps, not always the best, but all defects of this 
kind belonged to the general defective culture of 
the epoch in question. 

Have not unbelievers ascribed too much to the 
craft of priests and statesmen ? Priests have no 
doubt made of religion a trade, but they have 
been able to do this only because religion has had 
a strong hold on the consciences, or the affections 
of the people. Nor could they have originated 
religion. A priest is an officer of religion, and 
therefore must have been posterior to religion. 
Religion must have existed before it could have 
had ministers. Statesmen have no doubt found at 
times in religion a support for despotism, but only 
by availing themselves of its power over the people. 
Had not religion already swayed the people, it 
could have furnished no aid to the despot. 

We consider art as natural to man, or spring- 
ing from a natural want, because we find that man 
is everywhere an artist. The rude Indian polishes 
his bow, and paints the prow of his birchen canoe ; 
the Indian maiden decorates her hair with feathers 
and shells, and the Indian mother binds the wam- 
pum around the neck of her child, bearing witness 



RESULTS. 209 

to the same indestructible instinct which shall im- 
mortalize a Phidias or a Praxiteles, a Michael 
Angelo or a Raphael. From the fact that man 
wars with man, constructs weapons and delights in 
battle, we infer that the fighting propensity is 
natural to him. Why not, then, from the fact that 
he everywhere venerates and adores, erects the 
altar and inducts the priest, infer that the religious 
sentiment is natural to him, that he is naturally 
religious ? 

But if religion be natural to man, it is useless 
to war against it. He is religious because he is 
man. So long then as he remains man he will 
have some kind of religious worship. Can the 
infidel change his nature ? Can man be converted 
into a different order of being ? If not, then let 
the infidel cease his warfare. He professes to 
respect nature, let him then respect it in man, and 
not less when it prompts him to adore, than when 
it prompts him to build himself a cabin, clothe 
his body, or seek truth and goodness. Religion 
must be as indestructible as man's nature, and let 
us therefore cease to waste our time in trying to 
get rid of it. 

But man not only seeks to adore ; he also seeks 
to ascertain the true object of adoration. He in- 
quires if there be really any object worthy of 
adoration, and if so, what and where ? This 
question, Mr. Morton seemed to me to have an- 
swered. The reason demands an absolute cause, 
14 



210 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

and this cause we are not, and the external world 
is not. Then it must be above both us and nature, 
the cause of their causality and ours. I look into 
the reason I find that it contains the ideas of the 
finite and the infinite. This idea of the infinite is 
not a secondary idea. I cannot derive it from any 
other idea. My ordinary experience makes me 
acquainted only with finite things. But from no 
imaginable number of finites can I deduce the in- 
finite. I can draw from a thing only what is in it ; 
and as the idea of the finite does not contain the 
infinite, I cannot deduce the infinite from it. 
Logically also the idea of the infinite must precede 
that of the finite. I cannot perceive a thing, as 
finite, unless I have at the same time the concep- 
tion of the infinite from which to distinguish it. 
As my first experience is of finite things, the con- 
ception of the infinite must precede experience, 
and must therefore be a transcendental idea. 
That is, a conception of the pure reason, of the 
reason prior to all experience. If then I may 
trust the reason, there must be somewhere the 
infinite. But I can predicate infinity neither of 
myself nor of nature. Then back of and above 
both nature and myself, there must be an infinite 
reality, — God. The conception of unity, of per- 
fection, would lead me to the same result. 

But may I trust the reason ? If not, I am in a 
sad condition. I have nothing but the reason with 
which to show even that reason ought not to be 



RESULTS. 211 

trusted. Why shall I trust it when it declares it is 
not worthy of trust, rather than when it reveals to 
me my own existence, nature, and God ? If it be 
not worthy of trust, then I have no ground for be- 
lieving it when it declares it to be untrustworthy ; 
but if it be worthy of trust at all, as it is one in 
all its degrees, why may I not trust it in its highest 
revelations, as well as in its lowest ? But all this 
is unnecessary. I am not free in this matter. 
Eeason addresses me always in an imperative 
voice, and its conceptions command my assent. 1 
cannot discredit them if I would. Moreover, what 
have I always contended for? I have always 
extolled reason and condemned religious people 
for depressing it. I have condemned them be- 
cause I have supposed reason to be against them. 
I have then always admitted the authority of 
reason. I will do it now. If I do I see not how I 
can escape from Mr. Morton's conclusions. But 
do I wish to escape from these conclusions ? Not 
at all. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



SUPERNATURALISM. 



" I have been thinking over," said I to Mr. 
Morton, on meeting him a few days after the con- 
versation I have recorded, " your reasoning in 
proof of the existence of a God ; I have weighed 
it as carefully as I could, and I confess I am un- 
able for the present to get away from it. But I do 
not see that you have made any use of inspiration. 
Your system seems to me only a system of ration- 
alism, perhaps I should say, deism." 

"We will not dispute about words," he replied. 
Nevertheless, I hold myself to be a supernatural ist 
as well as a rationalist, and I seem to myself to 
have a place for inspiration." 

" What do you understand by inspiration, and 
what do you consider to be its office ? " 

" Your question is a short one, but it will require 
a long answer. Let me begin by saying, that men 
are prejudiced against inspiration, chiefly because 
they look upon it as an isolated fact, a sort of 
anomaly in our experience, without any analogy 
with the general and ordinary operations of the 



SUPEKNATURALISM. 213 

human mind. But this I hold to be incorrect. 
Inspiration is an unquestionable fact of human ex- 
perience, and, if I am not much mistaken, is as 
explicable as any other fact. 

" A favorite author with unbelievers, Thomas 
Paine, somewhere says in his Age of Reason, 
Whoever is in the habit of looking into himself, 
must have observed that he has two classes of 
thoughts. We have one class of thoughts which 
spring up in our minds whenever we will to think 
of any particular subject ; another class, which 
are involuntary, and come of their own accord. I 
am accustomed, he says, to treat these uninvited 
visiters with great respect ; for I have learned that 
from them we obtain the most valuable part of our 
knowledge. I quote from memory and doubtless 
do not give his exact words, but I give his thought. 
Now, if I mistake not, here is a recognition of cer- 
tain facts which will aid us to a right conception of 
inspiration. 

" You will please to call to mind what I have 
heretofore said of the reason. It is our only source 
of light. But reason I have demonstrated to be 
absolute, Divine. It is then superhuman, super- 
natural. Now, the reason has, as Paine implies in 
the passage quoted, not only a voluntary activity, 
but a spontaneous activity. It not only acts when 
we by our wills call it into action, as when we will 
to think upon any particular subject ; but it enters 
into activity of its own accord. That we all have 



214 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

thoughts and ideas which spring up in our minds 
without any effort of volition on our part, is what 
I think we must all have at times more or less 
distinctly noted. 

"When you first doubted, first began to inquire, 
you had already, in your mind, the ideas you ques- 
tioned. You had the belief in your own existence, 
in the existence of nature, and in that of God. 
You cannot even remember when you had not this 
belief. This belief was not of your own procur- 
ing. You had no agency in placing the ideas it 
implies in your mind. You may observe also that 
you began your intellectual life, not by denying, 
but by affirming. By what power did you affirm 
your own existence, that of nature, and that of 
God ? Surely not by reflection. For when you 
began to reflect, this primitive affirmation was the 
subject-matter of your reflection. 

" What I have affirmed of you I may affirm of 
the race. The race does not begin by reflecting, 
denying, and reasoning itself into conviction. It 
must believe something before it can deny, have 
ideas before it can reflect on them. Go back to 
the infancy of the race, and what do you discover ? 
Doubt, reflection, philosophy ? Not at all. The 
language of the primitive ages is affirmative : c In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth :' c God said let there be light, and there was 
light.' You are struck with the strength of faith 
you find, the undoubting confidence with which 



SUPERNATURALISM. 215 

the mass affirm, what you and I should hesitate 
long before assenting to. 

" From these and other facts with which I will 
not trouble you now, I infer that the human mind 
begins by affirmation, by faith, not by doubt. Now, 
the reflective reason or reason put into activity by 
our volitions, always begins by doubt, and proceeds 
by reflection, by reasoning. Its instruments are 
observation and logic. But in the infancy of the 
race, in the early chronicles of mankind, we find 
no employment of these instruments. Men see but 
they do not observe, believe but do not reason. 
Logic is not properly constituted till we have an 
Aristotle. 

" Now this primitive affirmation by the race, and 
even by the individual, as it could not have been 
the result of reflection, must have been by virtue of 
the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, the 
reason acting by its own energy. Now the truths 
we affirm on the authority of the spontaneous activ- 
ity of the reason, we do not and cannot ascribe to 
ourselves. We are conscious that in the revelation 
of these truths we have taken no part. We have 
done nothing. We do not seem to ourselves to 
have any agency in the matter. We do not affirm 
what we affirm on our own authority. We there- 
fore ascribe it to God, and call it inspiration, reve- 
lation. 

This primitive affirmation, prior to reflection, to 
all observation and reasoning, of the great princi- 



216 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

pies of human faith, principles which lie at the 
bottom of all spiritual life, and form the subject- 
matter of all after mental action, is what the human 
race has always understood by inspiration. And 
in this you and I now see that they have been 
right. The reason we have identified with God. 
In reflection it is indeed subjected to the infirmities 
of the flesh ; but in its spontaneous action, it acts 
independently of us, and is of course free from our 
imperfections. It acts then by virtue of its Divine 
energy, and its revelations are real revelations 
from God. 

" Those in whom this spontaneous activity is 
more remarkable than in the majority, seem to the 
multitude to be admitted more immediately into 
the secrets of the Almighty. They are therefore 
called the inspired, by w T ay of eminence, and are 
looked upon as the confidants and interpreters of 
God. They are the priests, the prophets of man- 
kind. Their chants become oracles, and are treas- 
ured up as the Sacred Word of God. Their laws 
and institutions are received as divine, and rever- 
enced as religion. 

" Observe, also, that this spontaneous activity of 
the reason is always accompanied with a move- 
ment of the sensibility, with a great degree of en- 
thusiasm. The prophet, therefore, always speaks 
in the language of enthusiasm. His prophecy is a 
chant, his revelation is a hymn, his language is 
poetry. In confirmation of my view, you may 



SUPER NATURALISM. 217 

remark, that poetry in all languages is older than 
prose. The sacred books of all nations — which 
are their earliest literature — are written in poetry. 
The Hebrews, who were remarkable for their reli- 
gious character, have given us in their literature 
scarcely a single example of prose. The Homeric 
poems date beyond authentic history ; we know 
not when their author flourished ; but Grecian prose 
is comparatively recent. The early literature of 
all modern nations consists in national songs and 
ballads. 

" I understand, then, by inspiration the spon- 
taneous revelations of the reason ; and I call these 
revelations Divine, because I hold the reason to be 
Divine. Its voice, is the voice of God, and what 
it reveals without any aid from human agency, is 
really and truly a Divine Revelation. They in 
whom this spontaneous reason is active in a high 
degree, raising them above their fellows into closer 
communion with God, are really and truly prophets 
of God. They know more of God and can tell 
us more of God than the rest of us. Rightly 
then are they reverenced as inspired messengers. 
Rightly too are their words received by the human 
race as authoritative, and respected as records of 
Divine revelations. 

" This word inspiration is applied to more sub- 
jects than one, though always with the same radical 
idea. The poet is said to be inspired, and every 
genuine poet is inspired. The lyric poet is inspired 



218 CHARLES ELWOGD. 

with a love of the lofty, the daring, the heroic, or 
the elegiac. A fire burns within him, kindles and 
exalts him, and he pours himself out in words 
which burn, exalt or melt the souls of his listeners. 
The descriptive poet is inspired with a more gentle 
and peaceful kind of inspiration. He is inspired 
by a sense of beauty in nature or in art, which he 
seeks to reproduce in his verse. 

" There is no radical difference between this 
inspiration proper to the poet, and that of the 
prophet. The poet is inspired by God under the 
aspect of love, beauty, joy, sorrow, liberty, hero- 
ism ; the prophet is inspired by God under the 
aspect of Sovereign, Father, Preserver, or Ee- 
deemer, and is moved by a sense of obedience, 
piety, sanctity, goodness. But in both it is one 
and the same God that inspires. The true poet 
utters as infallible truth in relation to the subject- 
matter of his song, as the prophet. The poems of 
the one are as authoritative, as far as they go, as 
the other's prophecies. Poetry, I am aware, en- 
joys no very high reputation for truth, but so far 
as it is genuine, it is the outspeaking of the Divin- 
ity, and embraces elements of universal truth. 
This explains why it is that the poet always com- 
mends himself to the universal mind, and his fame 
as his song is immortal. 

" The prophet is the poet chanting the Divine. 
His soul is full of God, and he pours himself out 
in a stream of harmony on which float along the 



SUPERNATURALISM. 219 

unsearchable things of God. God moves in him 
and speaks through him. He does not speak from 
himself, from reflection, human foresight and cal- 
culation, but as he is moved by the Holy Ghost ; 
and he utters merely the words given him to 
utter. 

" The character the inspiration assumes is de- 
termined by the genius and temper of the individ- 
ual inspired. This man is inspired by the idea of 
the beautiful, and his whole aim is to realize it. 
But his individual genius and temper determine 
whether he shall attempt to do it by chanting a 
poem, composing a melody, pronouncing an ora- 
tion, writing a book or constructing a temple. 
Another man is filled with the idea of the Holy. 
He sees God everywhere and in all things. His 
soul is absorbed in God, and he becomes a David, 
an Isaiah, a Paul, a Fenelon, a Penn, a Sweden- 
borg, an Oberlin. 

" You may observe also that it is rare that one 
individual alone is inspired. The notion that God 
himself kindles up one man's torch, and that we 
all must go and light our tapers at that, is not to 
be received without some hesitation. Here I sup- 
pose I differ somewhat from the common view of 
inspiration. I cannot bring myself to believe that 
in any age or country the human race are wholly 
dependent for light and warmth on any one man. 
God places the fate of humanity in the hands of 
no one of her sons. 



220 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

" This doctrine that only one or a few are in- 
spired, and that the rest must go to them for light 
and warmth, is too near akin to the political doc- 
trine which teaches that the mass must entrust 
themselves and their interests to the guidance of 
the enlightened few, to be wholly satisfactory to 
me. I always view with suspicion all doctrines 
which disinherit the masses and place them at the 
mercy of a few leaders. I believe God is impar- 
tial, that all his children share his love, and that 
he dispenses his favors alike to all. The opposite 
doctrine appears to me to be mischievous. It 
opens the door to the grossest abuses, and paves 
the way for the most intolerable tyranny. 

" Nothing is more common, you know, than to 
find those who have no confidence in the people. 
Even the great and good Washington, though he 
loved the people, doubted whether they could be 
safely entrusted with so large a share of liberty as 
they are entrusted with by our political institu- 
tions. Alexander Hamilton, a no ordinary man, 
distrusts the people, and thinks we shall have to 
resort to monarchy at last ; and almost any day 
you please you shall meet men who have the 
greatest regard for the good of mankind, a pro- 
found reverence for the dignity of human nature, 
and who seldom let pass an opportunity of speak- 
ing of the infinite worth of the human soul, as it 
exists even in the humblest of our race, who nev- 
ertheless have no confidence in the people. They 



SUPERNATURALISM. 221 

are afraid of crowds and look with a sort of con- 
tempt on the movements of multitudes. They 
have great confidence in the capacity of the people 
to be instructed, in their capacity of progress ; but 
none in their spontaneous power of perceiving 
truth and obeying its impulses. The people must 
be instructed. The enlightened few must teach 
them ; the favored few must go among them and 
by showing them examples of superior excellence 
stimulate them to virtue. Now all this, though it 
proceed from kind feeling, enlarged sympathies 
and generous hopes, is yet based on the notion 
that the few have means of knowledge, which the 
many have not, and that but for the light these 
favored few emit, the many would be in total 
darkness. The people have no light in them- 
selves. Here and there you shall find a man who 
may be called a sun shining with his own light, 
but all the rest are mere planets and satellites, 
shining only as they are shined upon. 

" Now I protest against this doctrine. The true 
light enlighteneth every man who cometh into the 
world. Every man has the true light in himself, 
and is a sun, and not a planet. If the masses 
are not aware of this, the reason perhaps may be 
found in the fact that they are in the habit of look- 
ing outward not inward. Each man, instead of 
looking into himself for light looks abroad, and up 
to some great man, learned man, or, what is worse 
still, to some rich man. 

" The impression has been very general, per- 



222 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

haps at times universal, that the people need 
rulers, guides, nursing fathers and nursing moth- 
ers. Out of this has grown up aristocracies, mon- 
archies, despotisms, tyrannies. From the earliest 
ages of history the few have struggled to save the 
people from themselves. The people, it is said, 
are ignorant, rash, and if entrusted with their own 
concerns, will assuredly ruin themselves. Hence 
it is always for the people's good that the few 
govern them ; and when governing them in the 
worst possible manner, overwhelming them with 
taxes and reducing them to complete slavery, it 
has still been for their good. Although perverting 
their consciences, and corrupting their manners 
by the false maxims and licentious examples of 
courts, it has all been for the people's good. Now, 
this could never have been but for the prevalence 
of the notion that the many have merely the capa- 
city of receiving light, and none of originating it ; 
that the many are therefore incapable of taking 
care of themselves, but must entreat the noble few 
to take care of them. 

" The same notion introduced into our religious 
faith has been attended by consequences still more 
revolting to a true lover of his race. The notion 
that only a few are religiously inspired, that God 
reveals his purposes only to a few chosen wit- 
nesses, and appoints these to reveal them to the 
people, has built up priesthoods, given a basis to 
priestcraft, and brought the human race into bon- 



STJPERNATURALISM. 223 

dage to sacerdotal corporations. If the masses 
who bowed with all reverence to the priest, had 
not believed that he possessed means of communi- 
cating with the gods which they did not, would 
they have submitted to his exactions ? Every 
priesthood is built up on the idea that God reveals 
himself only to a few, and that these few are to be 
the teachers of the world. The priest having 
once made the notion prevail that he was more in 
God's secrets than the mass, and that they had no 
means of knowing God but through him, was able 
to impose upon them almost at will. 

" The vast amount of wretched cant and ful- 
some panegyric, which disgusts the enlightened 
mind and correct taste, in regard to the Bible, 
comes from the same source. Why do men cry 
out so vehemently against every one who advances 
a doctrine not found in the Bible, or not taken 
directly from it ? Simply because they suppose 
the authors of the Bible were specially illuminated 
in order to be in their turn the special illuminators 
of the world. The Jewish nation was instructed 
that it might instruct other nations. Peter, James, 
John and Paul were taught the truth by God him- 
self, that they might teach it to others. This and 
all coming ages are therefore entirely dependent 
on a single book for all true knowledge of God. 
Alas for man, then, if by any wickedness the book 
should be corrupted, or by any accident destroyed ! 
Alas, too, for the nations who receive not this 



224 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

book, have never heard of it, and had no means of 
hearing of it ! They are all in darkness, wander- 
ing in the wilderness with not a single star even 
to break through the thick clouds and guide them 
by its feeble light to their home. 

" Now, people may say what they will, priests 
anathematize as they may, and statesmen utter 
as many old saws as they please, but I for one 
protest with the whole energy of my being, by 
all my reverence for God, and by all my love 
for mankind against a doctrine pregnant with such 
disastrous consequences. I shall not be a convert 
to it, till I become able to go all lengths in uphold- 
ing priestcraft and kingcraft. 

" I value books, and of all books I value the 
Bible the most ; I value the services of great and 
good men ; and I yield to no man in my readiness 
to receive instructions from those above me ; but 
I will not own that any man has any means of 
knowing God, man and man's destiny, which I 
have not also. If there be that in any man by 
virtue of which he has the right to call himself 
priest or king, there is also that in every man by 
virtue of which he has the same right. The Gos- 
pel aims to make all men kings and priests. Every 
man is a man if he chooses to be, and has in him- 
self all that he needs in order to be a man in the 
full significance of the term ; and therefore no one 
has any occasion to borrow a part of his manship 
from his brother. 



SUPERNATURALISM. 225 

" But do not infer from this that I hold all to be 
inspired in an equal degree. Reason is in all men, 
and it acts spontaneously in all men. All men 
then are inspired to a certain extent, and hence 
the power of all to apprehend the inspiration of 
each. But the reason is not active to the same 
degree in all men. No doubt some feel it more 
vividly than others, and have a clearer view of 
God, and duty. They are therefore undoubtedly 
capacitated to take the lead, to go before the mul- 
titude. But all have a kindred inspiration, and are 
merely younger brothers. They are members of 
the same family, and equal heirs, though not the 
elder members, nor the first to come into posses- 
sion of their inheritance. 

" Neither will you understand me to deny that 
one man may aid another. In whatever requires 
observation, in science and philosophy, one may 
undoubtedly be of great service to another, and 
even to the world. Plato, Aristotle, Des Cartes, 
Bacon, Locke, have not lived in vain, nor spent 
their strength for nought. The human race is 
greatly their debtor. But in all that concerns first 
principles each mind has the light in itself. The 
great office of the teacher, the principal mission 
of books, is to turn the mind in upon itself, and 
induce it to look with clear vision and reverent 
feeling upon the light ever shining there. 

" Inspiration rarely manifests itself in single 
minds alone. It may sometimes do it ; but in 
15 



226 C II 1ILE8 ELWOOD. 

general it manifests itself in the masses, and is 
called the spirit of the age. Christianity was an 
inspiration in this sense. The age in which it 
broke out was inspired. It was in fact a sponta- 
neous outbreak of the common mind, the out- 
speaking of God moving in the midst of the people. 
It found in Jesus its first clear and distinct utter- 
ance, in Paul its first philosophic interpreter, who 
gave it a fixed formula, and founded the church. 
Yet not in the mind of Jesus only was there this 
inspiration. Other minds and hearts as well as 
his were travailing with the Divine Idea of Immor- 
tality ; and when his ministers went forth to 
preach it, they did but reveal the multitude to 
themselves. They merely gave voice and form 
to what was already in the -minds and hearts of 
their hearers. Hence their power, the success 
of their preaching, and the conversion of the 
world. 

" Ordinarily when the time has come for a new 
doctrine to be brought out and incorporated into 
the common belief of mankind, you find every- 
where persons springing up, independent of each 
other, with a strong faith in it, and an invincible 
zeal in its defence. A new virtue is to be realized 
and practised by the race ; all the world seem car- 
ried away in its direction. The staid and sober 
few who may remain unaffected, may oppose 
themselves to the general current, but all in vain. 
Conservatives may sneer, reason, declaim, nick- 



SUPERNATURALISM. 227 

name, call the defenders of the new virtue, disor- 
ganizes, enemies of God and man, but all to no 
purpose. On they sweep by a power not their 
own, which they comprehend not, and which they 
do not even seek to comprehend. In all other 
respects than this one, they may be wrong, and 
even destructive. No matter. There is no re- 
sisting them. Old institutions, old manners, old 
customs, old modes of thought, men and women 
counted wise and prudent, all are before them as 
the chaff of the summer threshing floor before 
the wind, — are swept away or trampled under 
foot as on the multitude presses to the realization 
of the idea with which it is inspired. To the mere 
spectator this multitude may appear as the Apostles 
did to some on the day of Pentecost, when ' others 
mocking, said, These men are filled with new 
wine.' In this way the Christian idea of Immor- 
tality became predominant ; in this same way the 
doctrine of salvation by a crucified Redeemer was 
established, and the church founded ; in this same 
way was instituted the Commonwealth in England, 
and the Republic in France ; and this same way 
all important revolutions or reforms in the faith 
or practice of mankind will be effected." 



CHAPTER XXV. 



THE BIBLE. 



" I find nothing in particular to object to your 
views of inspiration. I see very clearly that you 
have a right to call yourself a supernaturalist as 
well as a rationalist. But I confess that I do not 
see how, on the ground you have assumed, you can 
maintain the special inspiration of the authors of 
the Bible. Why were not Homer, Socrates, Plato, 
Milton, Rousseau, inspired as well as David, Isaiah, 
Ezekiel and Paul ?" 

" If, instead of the word special, you used the 
word exclusive, I would admit your objection. I 
do not contend for the exclusive inspiration of the 
Bible writers, but I do contend for their special 
inspiration." 

" But you do not admit them to be inspired in 
the same sense the Christian world does." 

" Of that 1 am not so certain. There is a 
looseness, a vagueness in most men's notions which 
render it extremely difficult to tell precisely what 
they are. Give precision to the prevailing ideas 
of inspiration entertained by the Christian world, 



THE BIBLE. 229 

express them in clear and definite terms, and I 
think they will be found to be the same with mine. 
It has never been a doctrine of the church that 
none but the writers of the Bible were illuminated 
by the Spirit of God. Some of the early Greek 
Fathers contended for the reality of the inspira- 
tion of the Gentile sages. They say that it is by 
the inspirations of one and the same logos or 
reason, that an Isaiah prophesies, a Homer sings, 
and a Euclid solves mathematical problems. Paul 
assures us that c the manifestation of the Spirit is 
given unto every man to profit withal.' Job de- 
clares that ' there is a spirit in man and the inspi- 
ration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.' 
John bears witness to a ; true light which enlighten- 
eth every man that cometh into the world.' Jesus 
promises the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who 
was to abide with us forever, and who should lead 
us into all truth. Moreover the church has always, 
in some form or other, held to the reality of the 
inner Light. Always has it held to the doctrine 
of experimental religion, and in experimental 
religion it contends for an illumination of the 
understanding, by the Spirit of God, as well as for 
a purification of the affections. So the exclusive 
inspiration of the Bible-writers has never been a 
doctrine of the church. I do not then, in reality, 
depart from what has ever been accounted ortho- 
doxy, when I assert that God reveals himself to all 
men. What else in fact has the church meant by 



230 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

its doctrine of ' common grace ? ' What else has 
it meant by the assertion that the Spirit of God 
strives with all men ? 

u But while I contend, that in a certain sense 
God reveals himself to all men, and that all there- 
fore are really and truly inspired, I also admit 
that individuals may be specially inspired ; that is, 
inspired in a more eminent degree, than the many. 
These individuals are admitted into a closer inti- 
macy, if I may so speak, with the All-wise and 
All-holy, and therefore are able to tell us more of 
God, and to be better interpreters of his will. Now 
ordinarily we call none inspired, save those who 
are inspired in an eminent degree. These alone 
are called the inspired ; these alone are the pro- 
phets of God. This is what produces the seeming 
discrepancy between my views and those of the 
church. But the discrepancy is only seeming, 
not real. I too call these individuals the inspired ; 
I too call them prophets of God, in a sense in 
which I do not others. 

" Now, bear in mind, that we have determined 
the spontaneous reason, — that is, reason acting 
independently of our wills, — to be supernatural, 
divine. This reason is in all men. Hence, the 
universal beliefs of mankind, the universality of 
the belief in God and religion. Hence, too, the 
power of all men to judge of supernatural reve- 
lations. All are able to detect the supernatu- 
ral, because all have the supernatural in them- 



THE BIBLE. 231 

selves. Were it not so, we could detect God in 
no miracle, we could recognise him in none of his 
works, and could receive no revelation of him. 
Inasmuch as the reason taken in its independence 
is ahsolute, is supernatural, its spontaneous revela- 
tions are supernatural, superhuman. 

" Bear in mind, also, that some individuals ex- 
perience more of the workings of the supernatural 
reason than do the many. God is revealed to them 
more fully than he is to the world. These, accord- 
ing to the common mode of speaking, are the 
inspired, the prophets of God. Their words are 
words of God, as we have seen, and are for that 
reason authoritative. Now the Bible I hold to be 
written by individuals of this description. It is a 
record which the inspired prophets of the Hebrew 
nation, have left us of the revelations of God 
which they had received. This, if I mistake not, 
is the doctrine of the church, and if I understand 
myself it harmonizes with the doctrine I have con- 
tended for on inspiration. 

" I know but two methods of arriving at truth ; 
one by reflection, the other by the inspiration of 
God. That is, we attain to truth by its spontane- 
ous revelations, or by the slow and painful process 
of analysis and induction. In the last case we 
ourselves work, and often to no effect. In the 
first, as I have shown over and over again, it is 
God that works. Now, I see in the Bible-writers 
very few marks of analysis and induction. These 



232 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

writers do not attain to the truths they utter by- 
reasoning, by philosophizing. The truths they 
utter, they receive as flashes of lightning, and 
hence it is that they utter them as it were with 
' tongues of fire.' Being truths of the universal 
reason, truths transcending time and space, they 
commend themselves to all, and seem to address 
themselves to every man, and ' in his own tongue 
wherein he was born.' But when you read Plato 
and Cicero, you see the marks of reflection. 
These men you see are able philosophers, and 
have attained to much truth ; but they are not 
prophets ; they do not speak with authority. Their 
words are not the original words of God, but an 
attempted interpretation and verification of the 
original words of God. They make no revelation 
to you of new or hidden truths ; but merely 
account to you for certain beliefs you already 
entertain. Here is the difference between the 
two classes of writers to which you have referred 
me. 

" Then again the writers of the Bible are spe- 
cially inspired in another sense. Rousseau was 
not without inspiration, but his was not a peculiarly 
religious inspiration. His inspiration was of another 
kind. He was inspired with the idea of Nature, 
as contradistinguished from artificiality, or conven- 
tionalism. His mission was to break down the old 
social fabric and to lay the foundations of a new 
social order, more in accordance with the nature 



THE BIBLE. 233 

of man and of things. But the Bible-writers are 
inspired by God under the aspect religion more 
especially contemplates him. They are inspired 
with God as the Holy, as the object of veneration 
and worship, and as this is the highest view we can 
take of God, they are more especially prophets of 
God. There is a passage in Paul's first Epistle to 
the Corinthians, which throws some light on the 
doctrine I would set forth. 6 Now there are diver- 
sities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are 
differences of administration but the same Lord. 
And there are diversities of operations ; but it is 
the same God, which worketh all and in all. But 
the manifestation of the Spirit is given unto every 
man to profit withal. For to one is given by the 
Spirit the word of wisdom ; to another the word of 
knowledge ; to another faith ; to another the gifts 
of healing ; to another the working of miracles ; 
to another prophecy ; to another discerning of 
spirits ; to another divers kinds of tongues ; to 
another the interpretation of tongues : But all 
these worketh — or are effected by — that one 
and the self-same Spirit, dividing unto every man 
severally as he will.' * 

" Nations and individuals are inspired in relation 
to special purposes, for the performance of some 
special work in the general progress of Humanity. 

The Jews were chosen by the Spirit to bring out 

* 1 Cor. vii. 4 — 11. 



234 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

and perfect the religious element of man's nature ; 
the Greeks had the mission of developing the philo- 
sophical element, and of realizing the idea of the 
Beautiful ; Rome, that of bringing out the patriotic 
element, and of founding law or jurisprudence. 
In like manner each of these general divisions of 
the great work of human progress is subdivided 
among individuals. In relation to the religious 
element, to Moses is assigned one work, to David 
another, and to Isaiah still another. In relation to 
the philosophical element,- one task is allotted to a 
Socrates, another to a Plato, and still another to an 
Aristotle. So I might say in regard to all the other 
elements of human nature. The Spirit requires 
not one man to do the whole, but subdivides and 
distributes the work among nations and individuals 
according to his own pleasure. Every man then 
who is called to a particular work, is specially in- 
spired. And as religion is the highest of all, as 
the religious element in fact embraces all the other 
elements of our nature, they who are specially 
inspired to bring out the religious element, are in- 
spired with a mission so much higher than all 
others, that they alone seem worthy to be called 
the inspired. The writers of the Bible having this 
kind of inspiration, being inspired for the accom- 
plishment of this mission, are therefore specially 
inspired ; and stand not only in the first rank of 
the inspired, but in a rank by themselves above 
all others." 



THE BIBLE. 235 

" But do you believe everything written in the 
Bible is true ? " 

" Your question is a broad one, and is not easily 
answered ; because no one man can tell precisely 
all that is actually written in the Bible. The mere 
words of the Bible are nothing. We must look at 
what is actually meant. Now, I know no man who 
is able in all cases to say what is actually meant 
by the Bible-writers, whose experience is wide and 
various enough to interpret all they have said. 
Therefore I hold it the part of the wise man to be 
silent in some cases, and neither profess to believe 
nor to disbelieve. It will be time enough for him 
to accept or reject, when he is sure that he under- 
stands." 

" From all of which I am to understand that 
there are some things in the Bible which you do 
not believe." 

" Rather that there are some matters in it which 
I do not profess to be able to understand. I cer- 
tainly would not, in all cases even where I do un- 
derstand, abide by the mere letter. I certainly 
would not take it upon myself to defend all the 
laws ascribed to Moses, as so many divine institu- 
tions in the absolute sense of the term ; but I would 
contend strenuously for the Divine inspiration of 
Moses, and for the truth of the great principles he 
sought to embody in his legislation." 

" What say you of the marvellous stories called 
miracles with which the Bible is filled ? " 



236 CHARLES ELWOOD, 

" The first question with regard to these miracles 
is, did they actually take place ? I can assign no 
reasons a priori why they should not have taken 
place. Nature is but God's will, and he is not 
bound by what we term its laws ; for its laws are 
himself. Therefore there was nothing to hinder 
him from performing them, if he chose. Also 
the general canons of historical criticism, which I 
adopt in ail other cases, seem to require me to 
admit them. 1 cannot persuade myself that the 
universal belief in miracles is wholly an error. I 
could not so believe without depriving myself of all 
ground of certainty. Then the miracles of the 
New Testament are so interwoven with the texture 
of the narrative, and make up so essential a part 
of it, that I cannot deny them, without casting 
suspicion on the whole narrative itself. And I 
cannot reject the narrative itself, without departing 
from the principles of historical evidence which I 
find myself compelled to admit everywhere else. 

" The second question in regard to the miracles 
is, are they genuine miracles ? That is, were they 
actually performed by the power of God, or were 
they mere tricks of jugglery ? This question is 
not to be answered in the gross, but in detail. 
Each individual miracle is to be taken on its own 
bottom, and to be judged by itself. This we are 
able to do, because, as I have shown, we have in 
us an element of the supernatural. Therefore, 
there is in us a power of detecting God intuitively. 



THE BIBLE. 237 

If we detect the presence of God in the miracle, 
we are to term it an actual miracle. This I think 
I can do, at least, in some of the alleged miracles. 
I therefore contend for the genuineness of at least 
a portion of the miracles recorded in the Bible." 

" Do you use the miracles as proofs of the reve- 
lation ? " 

" No. Because the evidence I have of the truth 
of the revelation, is stronger than that which I 
have of the fact that the miracles actually took 
place. The miracles rest on historical testimony, 
the weakest kind of testimony ; the truth of the 
revelation rests on the testimony of a witness I 
have within. I do not use them as proofs, because 
I have as much ability to detect the presence of 
God in a moral doctrine as 1 have in the display 
of physical power. If I know nothing of God, I 
cannot detect him in the extraordinary display of 
physical power ; if I know enough of him to de- 
tect him in the miracle, I must needs know enough 
of him to detect him in the doctrine, and therefore 
I do not need the miracle." 

" What then is the use of miracles ? " 

" I do not know what was the actual purpose for 
which they were wrought ; nor do I know what 
purpose they actually served. I can conceive, 
however, of a purpose they might have answered, 
and there is a use I can make of them now. As 
to the purpose they might have served : Mankind, 
especially when but partially enlightened, are much 



238 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

more attracted by extraordinary displays of physi- 
cal power, than by the exhibition of moral gran- 
deur. Had Jesus, for instance, appeared in the 
simple dress of a Jewish peasant from the obscure 
village of Nazareth, out of which it was prover- 
bially said no good thing could come, whatever had 
been the purity of his life, the truth and excellence 
of his doctrines, he would hardly have secured a 
single listener. The miracles he performed, there- 
fore, were necessary to draw attention to him, and 
induce people to listen to him. To the simple 
peasant-teacher nobody would have paid any atten- 
tion. But from the man who could cast out devils, 
open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the 
deaf, enable the lame to walk and cause the dumb 
to sing, who could still the raging tempest, and 
compel the grave to yield up the dead to life, they 
could not so easily turn away. Here was some- 
thing extraordinary ; here was a wonderful man, 
what had he got to say ? 

" Again, you cannot have failed to observe how 
prone men are to regard nature as possessed of 
causative power. Nature moves on so harmo- 
niously, with so much regularity and uniformity, 
that we are exceedingly liable to regard all her 
phenomena as the effects of her own independent 
causality ; thus stopping at second causes and vir- 
tually banishing God from the universe. Now it 
seems necessary that this order, this uniformity 
should at times be broken through, so that we may 



THE BIBLE. 239 

see that an omnipotent Will rules in the affairs of 
the world ; that there is a God who holds nature in 
his hand and does with it as he pleases. Miracles, 
which are interruptions of the natural course of 
events, occurring at distant intervals, seem to me 
admirably calculated to produce this effect, to raise 
men's minds from second causes to the First Cause, 
and to show them that nature is but what He wills. 

" There is another use of miracles, or rather of 
the events termed miracles, which I can make. I 
may regard them as so many symbols, each cover- 
ing a great truth, or an important moral lesson. 
This use of them, is, perhaps, the principal one to 
be made of them now, and it is affected by no 
theory we may adopt as to their having actually 
occurred. Take as an illustration of what I mean, 
the miracle of the resurrection. I of course admit 
the miracle in its literal sense. But suppose I could 
not make it out that the body of Jesus actually 
rose, yet the great lesson taught us by the story of 
the resurrection remains unimpaired. Jesus was 
engaged in a great work, that of the complete and 
final redemption of man from every species of 
thraldom. In this work he encountered opposition, 
he was taken and crucified, buried in a new tomb, 
closed up and guarded with armed soldiery ; but 
on the third day he rose from the dead, and after 
a few days ascended in triumph to God. So runs 
the narrative. 

" Now for the moral. The defenders of the 



240 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

truth may be poor and few in number, they may 
be despised, persecuted and put to death. Their 
cause may seem crushed to the earth, and destroyed 
forever. But it is not dead. It shall rise again. 
It shall burst the cerements of the grave, strike to 
the earth the armed bands of its enemies, and rise 
on high and shine forth in Divine glory and majesty. 
And is it not so. The earth has been strown with 
the dead bodies of the defenders of Liberty, and 
yet not one drop of blood has been spilt in vain. 
The cause has always risen from the grave, and 
been always marching onwards to victory. An 
obscure individual utters a great idea ; the kings 
of the earth conspire against him, his feeble band 
of followers are dispersed, but the idea is immortal, 
is unconquerable, and rises from the dust of the 
battle-field, where it was supposed to be left with 
the slain, prepared for new battles and ultimate 
victory. Here is a truth precious to all the friends 
of humanity. It breathes the breath of life into 
the reformer, enables him to stand up undaunted 
against a world. What though I am alone, and of 
the people there is none with me ? what though ye 
scoff and sneer at me ? what though ye rage and 
vent your spite at me ? Rage on, do your worst. 
Ye may silence my tongue, palsy my arm, crush 
my body, and seal me up in a new tomb hewn 
from the rock. What then ? Ye cannot touch the 
holy cause in which I am engaged. I speak for 
God, for man, and my words shall echo through 



THE BIBLE. 241 

eternity ; before the truths I utter ye shall yet 
grow pale and tremble ; nay, bow down and wor- 
ship. Here is the moral of the resurrection. Cher- 
ish it all ye who love your race, and know that in 
the sacredness of your cause ye are immortal and 
in vincible.' 5 



16 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



THE CHURCH. 



" Passing over the Bible, what is your view of 
the church?" 

" The object of Jesus was to found a spiritual 
kingdom on earth ; that is, to bring all mankind 
under the dominion of the great ethical and reli- 
gious principles he set forth, all of which an Apos- 
tle sums up in the terms, ' righteousness and 
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' A kingdom 
of this kind must needs have its throne in the con- 
science and the affections, and is therefore by its 
very nature internal and invisible. The true 
church of Christ, the true catholic church, I hold 
therefore to be not an outward, visible church, but 
an inward and invisible church. 

" Nevertheless the internal must needs have an 
outward, visible symbol. It must manifest itself 
in the outward organization of mankind. In the 
past it has been able to do this only by means of 
an organization separate from the civil or political 
organization ; that is, by a separation of church 
and state. But I do not find that Jesus contem- 



THE CHURCH. 243 

plated this double organization of mankind. In 
strictness he allows but a single organization. The 
state should be a church. That is, the state should 
be organized in perfect accordance with the great 
principles of truth and righteousness which consti- 
tute the internal church, and then no other organi- 
zation of mankind would be needed, or in fact 
admissible. The time before this can be done 
will be long. Mankind are yet suffering from the 
evils, which have resulted from the union of church 
and state ; that is, by the alliance of the two organ- 
izations, and they must very generally regard 
what I am contending for as a renewal of the 
same. They cannot as yet understand the differ- 
ence between a union of church and state, and 
the unity, or identity, of church and state. So 
we must wait patiently. All will come right in 
due time." 

" But I am more particularly interested in the 
doctrines of the church. In order to be a Chris- 
tian must I embrace all these mysterious, absurd 
or conflicting dogmas, the church has contended 
for?" 

ei My friend, Mr. Howard, who never troubles 
himself with the dogmas of the church, will tell 
you that in order to be a Christian, all you need is 
to live the life of Jesus." 

" Certainly," remarked Mr. Howard, who that 
instant came in. " I see little good which comes 
from mere doctrinal discussions. I find men very 



244 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

much the same under all creeds and under none. 
Tell me a man's creed, and I must still inquire 
what are his morals. I care little about modes of 
faith. Give me a good life, patterned after the 
life of Jesus, and I am satisfied." 

" So am I," replied Mr. Morton. " Neverthe- 
less, ideas are not to be thought lightly of. There 
are great problems relating to God, to man, and 
his relations to God, to man's duty and destiny, 
which it is very important should be solved ; and 
I must believe one's character is essentially af- 
fected by the solutions he adopts. I am far from 
condemning zeal for the faith, and I confess that I 
prefer bigotry, and even the most violent persecu- 
tion for opinion's sake, to mere indifference to all 
opinions. True liberality is at an infinite remove 
from indifference. Liberality does not prohibit 
one from valuing his own faith, from regarding it 
as superior to all others, and of infinite importance 
to the welfare of the soul ; but it consists in allow- 
ing to all men the same right to form their own 
opinions, and to propagate and defend them, which 
we claim for ourselves. 

" For my own part, my philosophy teaches me 
to be very slow in dissenting from opinions which 
have been embraced by any considerable portions 
of my fellow men. The fact that a given doctrine 
has been widely believed, and earnestly contended 
for, is to me a presumption that it covers some 
truth, or an aspect of some truth, essential to the 



THE CHURCH. 245 

complete intellectual life of man. I then do not 
attempt to reject and disprove, but to comprehend 
and verify ; and I count not myself to have rightly 
comprehended a doctrine till I have seen it in a 
light in which my reason approves it. 

" It is undoubtedly no easy matter to get at the 
precise truth or aspect of truth covered by a par- 
ticular doctrine. My method is to interrogate my 
own consciousness. All doctrines cover a fact of 
consciousness, or are designed to meet some want 
of the soul or understanding. I attempt then by 
a scrupulous analysis of human nature, to find 
what is the fact which the doctrine in question is 
designed to cover, or the want it is intended to 
meet. When I have discovered this fact, or this 
want, I take it for granted that I have discovered 
all that is essential in the doctrine. Undoubtedly 
in this analysis I may err ; I may overlook some 
fact ; I may not reduce a given fact to its lowest 
denomination ; and I may misinterpret the facts I 
do discover. But I must be as honest and faithful 
as I can, and do all in my power to guard against 
error. To this end I must proceed slowly, and not 
be hasty in rushing to conclusions. I must go 
over the ground often, and review, and re-review 
my work till I have attained to all the exactness in 
my power. 

" In a work of this kind I have been engaged 
for some years. When I have completed it to my 
own satisfaction, I hope to be able to give the 



246 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

worid the results. But as yet I am a learner. 
Every day enlarges my experience and developes 
new wants within me, which essentially modify 
my former conclusions. Where I shall end, I 
know not now. But the more I inquire, the more 
deep and varied becomes my experience, the more 
confidence do I acquire in the experiences record- 
ed in the Bible, and the more willing do I become 
to trust them where my own is imperfect or 
doubtful. 

" On the great leading points of Christian faith 
I have attained to what I deem well-grounded 
convictions, and these convictions, so far as I can 
myself judge, are substantially the same with those 
which the church has always contended for. How 
far the church will receive my expositions, I know 
not, and care not. I agree with it in the main as 
to what it actually believes, but I differ from it 
often as to the account it gives of its faith. I 
accept its faith, but not always its philosophy, 
what it really means, though I sometimes reject 
its interpretations. 

" The great error of different sects is not in the 
fact that they embrace false doctrines, but defec- 
tive doctrines. What they have is true, as far as 
it goes, but is not the whole truth. Each sect has 
a truth, and is so intent on maintaining that truth, 
that it overlooks others equally essential. The 
Calvinist has a great truth, — the sovereignty of 
God. He would introduce this truth everywhere. 



THE CHURCH. 247 

God is to him an absolute sovereign, who disposes 
of all things as he pleases, makes one vessel unto 
honor and another unto dishonor ; has mercy on 
whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth. 
This is all true. But there is another truth which 
the Calvinist overlooks, — the free agency of man. 
He is so intent on exalting God, and extending the 
sphere of the Divine action, that he leaves man out 
of the account. 

" The Arminian, on the other hand, struck with 
the fact that man after all must count for some- 
thing, plants himself on man's free agency. In 
his efforts to exalt man, and give him his proper 
sphere of activity, he overlooks the divine agency, 
and virtually annihilates God. Now both build on 
real facts ; for God is absolute sovereign, and man 
is free. Both facts must be accepted. Man's free- 
dom must be so interpreted as to leave God's 
sovereignty complete, and God's sovereignty must 
be so interpreted as to leave man's ability unim- 
paired. 

" The believer in endless punishment is struck 
with the fact of God's justice. He recognises the 
fact which our reason discloses, that no man should 
be suffered to sin with impunity. God is just. 
He is of purer eyes than to look on sin with the 
least allowance or approbation. He will therefore 
by no means clear the guilty. So intent is the 
believer in endless punishment on this fact, that he 
does not sufficiently consider that God is also a 



248 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

God of love and mercy. The Universalist seizes 
upon this latter fact which he exaggerates and so 
interprets as virtually to exclude the idea of justice. 
Both are right, and both are wrong. But the two 
ideas are easily enough reconciled. The Univer- 
salist does not object to man's receiving the conse- 
quences which, in the order of Providence, neces- 
sarily follow transgression ; nor will the believer 
in endless misery deem it unjust that a man, when 
he has ceased to sin and become holy, should re- 
ceive the rewards of holiness. Then assume that 
God will never place a man in any condition in 
which he cannot repent, and become holy if he 
will, and all controversy must cease. If the man 
sins eternally, let him be damned eternally ; if he 
repent and becomes holy, whenever the event may 
occur, let him, as he must from the very state of 
his soul, enjoy God and heaven. 

" The Trinitarian contends for the Deity of the 
Son and Spirit, and in doing this he overlooks to 
some extent the fact of God's unity, that Father, 
Son and Holy Ghost are but one God. The Uni- 
tarian, takes up the idea of unity which the Trini- 
tarian neglects, and looks so steadily on this, that 
he fails to see that this one God exists as a Trinity. 
We ought to be careful that our explanations of 
the Trinity do not impair the idea of unity, and we 
should so understand the unity of God as to leave 
room for the admission of his threefold existence." 

" And how is this to be done ?" 



THE CHURCH. 249 

" I can give you now only one way of doing it. I 
might remark that if you supposed God to be a mere 
unity, an absolute unity, you could never get at 
multiplicity ; consequently you could never arrive 
at creation. God is not a mere barren unity, 
dwelling in eternal solitude, but he manifests him- 
self in variety. Now in order to do this he must 
be both one and many, finite and infinite. He 
must then be one and many, and their relation. 
Here is a Trinity which you will find in the reason, 
implied in every assertion, and in every thought. 
But on this I cannot now dwell. I look at God as 
the Ground of all existence, the Source whence all 
life and being proceed, and I call him the Father. 
I look again at this same God, as manifested, or 
uttered, that is, put forth, and I call it the Word, 
or Son. I look once more at this same God as a 
vivifying and sanctifying Spirit, preserving nature 
and giving it its life, enlightening the soul and 
sanctifying it, and I call it the Holy Ghost. Here 
are to my mind three obvious distinctions, each of 
which is God, and all three of which are one and 
the same God. 

" The doctrine of the Atonement has excited 
not a little controversy. Still I think the doctrine 
is founded in truth. Christianity addresses man as 
a sinner and it seeks his recovery, his reconcilia- 
tion and union with God. 

" Now I apprehend that man everywhere has 
the consciousness of sin. The tradition of a prim- 



250 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

itive Fall is nearly if not quite universal. No man 
feels that he stands in his proper relation to God. 
Every one feels that he has sinned against God, 
and has fallen from his primitive innocence, and 
lost the Divine favor. Now this is not a state in 
which a man is willing to live ; for say what we 
will, man has a conscience, and one that makes 
itself heard too, at least sometimes. Nothing is 
so painful to man, so insupportable, as the con- 
sciousness that he is a sinner. Let me but feel 
that I have held fast to my integrity, that I have 
walked ever by the law of God, and have nothing 
wherewith to reproach myself, and I can smile 
even at the stake. But when once I am obliged 
to confess to myself that I am a sinner, and can no 
longer look upon myself but with a sort of loath- 
ing, I am miserable indeed. I already feel the 
tortures of the damned ; the flames of hell are 
already burning within me, and I have not one 
drop of water with which to cool my parched 
tongue. I cannot live in this state. 

" But this is only half of the evil. Sin makes 
me a coward. Adam, after his transgression, 
comes not forth to meet his God, but seeks to 
conceal himself among the trees. When I have 
the consciousness of sin, I am afraid to meet God. 
I think he must be angry with me. I have a 
fearful looking for of wrath and indignation. God 
is my enemy and he can crush me. My own 
heart condemns me, and God is greater than my 
heart. 



THE CHURCH. 251 

u As a sinner I need two things ; first, that 
which shall wash out my sins, save me from the 
tortures of a guilty conscience, and make me holy ; 
and second, that which shall restore me to the 
favor of God which I feel I must have lost, save 
me from his wrath, and make him again my 
friend. Now here are two deep wants of the 
human soul to be met. They are universal wants 
as I learn from the fact that men in all ages and 
countries of the world, in all times and places, 
have sought to provide for them. Sometimes by 
sacrifices and offerings, and sometimes by self- 
inflicted penance, lacerations of the body, the 
sacrifice of the objects dearest to the affections, or 
by voluntary submission to poverty and want. 
The rites and ceremonies and disciplines of ail 
religions have this end in view. The Jewish 
economy was, to a great extent, proposed as a 
means of saving the soul from sin and reconciling 
it to God. To this end were its fasts, its ablutions, 
oblations and sacrifices. 

" But the blood of bulls, of rams and he-goats, 
cannot wash away guilt and atone for sin. The 
injunctions of the Jewish law were inadequate. 
By the deeds which that law enjoined no flesh 
could be justified. Those deeds could not purge 
the conscience and make the comers thereunto 
perfect. 

" Christianity proposes itself as the sovereign 
remedy. It offers us the atonement. But what ac- 



252 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

cording to Christianity is the atonement ? Through 
all religions you find runs the idea of sacrifice. 
Man has never felt it possible to atone for sin and 
gain the favor of God without a sacrifice. But 
the sacrifice enjoined by all religions previous to 
Christianity were insufficient, and could not secure 
the justification, much less the sanctification of 
the sinner. The sacrifice Christianity enjoins, is 
therefore different in kind from that enjoined by 
any other religion. What it is may be inferred 
from a passage in the prophet Micah : c Where- 
with shall I come before the Lord and bow myself 
before the high God ? Shall I come with burnt 
offerings, with calves a year old ? Will the Lord 
be pleased with thousands of rams, or ten thou- 
sands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born 
for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the 
sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, 
what is good. And what doth the Lord require of 
thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God ? ' # A just God can accept 
only the just, and to be reconciled to God we must 
come into harmony with him, possess in ourselves 
a godly spirit or disposition. The real sacrifice 
then enjoined by Christianity is a self-sacrifice. 
We are to present ourselves to God a living sacri- 
fice. The literal death of Jesus, viewed as de- 
tached from its connexions and moral influence, 
does not either save us from our own guilt, or 

* Micah vi. G, 7, 8. 



THE CHURCH. 253 

bring us into union with God. This the church 
has always asserted, in asserting that in order to 
effect our salvation there must be a practical ap- 
plication of the atonement. The individual must 
become really and personally holy, and then and 
not till then, will God accept him, and blot out the 
remembrance of his transgression. This is the 
real Christian doctrine of atonement stated in its 
philosophical nakedness. 

" But if you go back to the age in which the Gos- 
pel was first promulgated, you will readily perceive 
that the doctrine in this naked form could not have 
met its wants, nor in fact can it meet the want of 
the great majority of our own generation. The 
mass could not so refine upon the matter, nor ap- 
preciate a doctrine apparently so dry and abstract. 
Here they were, tortured with guilt and trembling 
before a stern and inexorable Judge. What 
should they do ? Assure us, say they, that God 
will pardon us. Mercy, mercy, we want mercy. 
Do you doubt ? Behold then the cross. See there, 
nailed to the accursed tree, the Son of God. If 
God has not refused to give you up his only be- 
gotten and well -beloved Son to die for you, shall 
he refuse to pardon you ? Behold his infinite com- 
passion for sinners, and dare trust his mercy. 

" Go again with the doctrine of the atonement 
in its philosophic formula to the northern barba- 
rians who overran the Roman empire, and talk to 
them of the necessity of personal holiness, and of 



254 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

being godlike in their dispositions ; of the import- 
ance of self-sacrifice, and walking according to the 
rules of right reason, and what impression will you 
make ? The spiritual nature in them is una- 
wakened ; they live in the senses and not in the 
spirit. Would you humanize them and purify and 
exalt their sentiments, you must have something to 
strike their imaginations, and touch their sensibility. 
Point your ruthless barbarian, on whose heart mercy 
has never gleamed, to the cross : let him see there 
a bleeding and agonizing God, a God dying that 
man might live, and his rough soul is touched, and 
tears stream down his weather-beaten cheeks. 
What a sinner am I, that I have caused God to 
come down and die on the cross that I might live ? 
" That the Christian doctrine of atonement might 
meet the wants of the human race, and be efficient 
in reconciling them to God, it was necessary that 
it should be presented in its symbolic form. It has 
been so presented, and well is it that it has been. 
Nevertheless, the church must suffer those of us 
who wish, to interpret the symbol. The death of 
Jesus is symbolic of the great fact, that sin is 
washed out and the atonement realized only by 
giving up ourselves to God, and by being ready, 
able and willing to live and die for man as Jesus 
did. This great fact is what the church has al- 
ways been striving after, and it has done it in the 
only way in which it has been able to do it. You 
must speak to men in their own language. You 



THE CHURCH. 255 

do not tell men the truth, when you undertake to 
tell it to them in a language of which they are 
ignorant. 

" About the doctrine of regeneration, also, the 
Christian world has disputed. I conceive, how- 
ever, that the matter may be easily settled. Pela- 
gius recognised in man a certain degree of ability 
to effect his own salvation. Saint Augustine denied 
human ability, and represented salvation as wholly 
of God. 

" Now, on the one hand, man is unquestionably 
fallen, and has not the ability to recover himself. 
I am conscious that I am not sufficient to effect my 
own redemption. I feel the need of assistance. 
On the other hand, I am equally conscious that I 
possess some ability. I have two sources of recu- 
perative energy, — my reason and my will. My 
affections and tastes are corrupted, but I am still 
able to see the right and to will it. But this is not 
enough. Though I see the good, and resolve to 
pursue it, I am drawn by my lusts into sin. These 
are the facts of consciousness. 

" Now what I want is, that my body should be 
brought into subjection to the law of my mind, that 
my affections and tastes should be so changed as to 
give me a relish for the food which endureth unto 
everlasting life. I may, as an unregenerate man, 
see the right, will it, and even do it, so far as its» 
outward performance is concerned. But this is 
not enough. I must do it because I love it. God 



256 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

says, c My son, give me thy heart.' I must delight 
in the law of the Lord, and find my meat and drink 
in doing his will. Now the change by which this 
effect is produced in me, is what I understand by 
regeneration. But this change 1 do not effect. It 
is effected by the Spirit of God. Yet not without 
my concurrence and cooperation. I am a complex 
being. On one side of my nature I am passive, 
and on the other I am active. In the fact of re- 
generation I both act and am acted upon. There 
is a concurrence of both powers, — the Divine and 
the Human. You may not be able to tell precisely 
where grace ends and human ability begins, but 
you must beware that you do not so interpret the 
one as to exclude the other. 

" Other doctrines I would remark upon, but I 
have talked till I am tired. You will gather, from 
what I have said, my general views of Christian 
doctrines, and my method of investigating them. 
Beware of exclusiveness. Beware of denying. 
Seek always to comprehend. Know that the hu- 
man mind never embraces unmixed falsehood, and 
cannot believe a pure absurdity. Range freely 
over all doctrines, analyze them all, and what you 
find in them which accords with human nature, 
as you find it in your own experience, or in the 
records of the race, hold fast and cherish, for it is 
i the truth of God and profitable to man." 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



CONCLUSION. 



I have now gone through with what I had to say 
respecting my intellectual struggles, in passing from 
infidelity to an unwavering belief in God and the 
supernatural origin of Christianity. I have detailed 
with some minuteness and with as much accuracy 
as I could, the various arguments and views by 
which my recovery was effected. 

I have always felt myself greatly indebted to 
my friends, Mr. Howard and Mr. Morton, for the 
aid they afforded me. The one gave me an exem- 
plification of Christianity in practical life, and won 
my love for it ; the other showed me its foundation 
in my nature, and demonstrated its truth to my un- 
derstanding. The more I pursued the course of 
reasoning Mr. Morton pointed out, the more clear 
and certain did the truth of Christianity appear to 
my mind ; and I am now fully satisfied that every 
man who becomes acquainted with the laws of his 
own reason, and the wants of his own soul, must 
be convinced that the religion of Jesus is true and 
from God. 

17 



258 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

The effect of this change in my belief on the 
temper of my mind and my general disposition, I 
am satisfied has been salutary. I have had much 
to contend with since as well as before ; the cur- 
rent of my life has never run smooth ; I have ever 
been in a false position, and I have had trials the 
world has little suspected ; but I have generally 
maintained a calm and equable frame of mind, and 
been able to bear my burdens without being over- 
whelmed. I have seen a Providence in all things, 
and have felt that all the events of this world, 
whether great or small, were under the control of 
a wise Governor, who would cause all things to 
work together for good. I have often had to stand 
alone, and to contend single-handed against my 
Christian brethren ; but I have been sustained be- 
cause I felt I was right, and that God would never 
abandon those who were faithful to conscience and 
duty. The heavens have often been obscured by- 
thick clouds, and the light of day has been shut 
out ; but I have never doubted that there were a 
bright sun and clear blue sky beyond. 

As to the particular views which I have adopted, 
their general character may be gathered from the 
conversations of my friend and teacher Mr. Morton. 
I have not, however, adhered blindly to his opinions. 
In some lespects I have modified them, and often 
I have chosen, where I adopted them, to express 
them in different terms. His great object was to 
present Christianity in a light which should enable 



CONCLUSION. 259 

the unbeliever to see its truth. He found me an 
unbeliever, and he could not therefore talk to me 
as if I was already a believer. There can be no 
doubt, that had he been conversing with individuals 
whose faith was fixed, he would have used much 
more Scriptural language, and been less careful to 
point out the rational element of religion. But he 
had to adapt his language to my wants, to use a 
language I could understand ; and which should 
enable me to see the coincidence between my own 
experience and that which I found recorded in the 
Bible. In this he did right, and so far as I was 
concerned he was signally successful ; and must 
have been equally successful with any others who 
should have been in a like condition with myself. 

In looking back upon the long struggle I have 
had, I must thank God for it. I have been re- 
proached by my Christian brethren; they have 
tried to make me believe that I was very wicked 
in being an unbeliever ; but I have never re- 
proached myself for having been one, nor have 
I ever regretted it. I would consent to go through 
the whole again, rather than not have the spiritual 
experience I have thus acquired. I have sinned, 
but never in having doubted ; I have much to 
answer for, but not for having been an unbeliever. 
I have no apologies to make to the Christian world. 
I have no forgiveness to ask of it. I have done it 
no disservice, and it will one day see that I have 
not been an unprofitable servant. It has never 



260 CHARLES EL WOOD. 

fairly owned me, but I care not for that. Even 
to this day it calls me an infidel, but that is no- 
thing. It will one day be astonished at its own 
blindness ; and when freed from the flesh, in that 
world where I shall not be disturbed by the dark- 
ness of this, I shall see it doing even more than 
justice to my memory. I have not lived in vain, 
nor in vain have I doubted, inquired, and finally 
been convinced. When the scales fell from my 
eyes, and I beheld the true light I followed it ; and 
I have done what was in my power to direct others 
to it. My task is now well nigh done, and I am 
ready to give in my last account. I say not this 
in a spirit of vain-boasting, but in humble confi- 
dence. I say it to express my strong faith in God, 
and in his care for all who attempt to do his will. 
I doubt not that many good Christians may be 
shocked at first sight at what I have here recorded. 
They will see no coincidence between the views 
here set forth and their own cherished convictions ; 
but I will assure them, that as they read on, and 
fairly comprehend them, they will find the coinci- 
dence all but perfect. The Christianity here set 
forth is the Christianity of the universal church, 
though presented perhaps in an uncommon light. 
I cannot persuade myself that a new Christianity 
is here presented, but the old Christianity which 
all the world has believed, under a new aspect, 
perhaps, and an aspect more peculiarly adapted to 
the wants of the present age. It cannot have 



CONCLUSION. 261 

escaped general observation, that religion, for some 
time, has failed to exert that influence over the 
mind and heart that it should. There is not much 
open skepticism, not much avowed infidelity, but 
there is a vast amount of concealed doubt, and 
untold difficulty. Few, very few among us but 
ask for more certain evidence of the Christian 
faith than they possess. Many, many are the 
confessions to this effect, which I have received 
from men and women whose religious character 
stands fair in the eyes of the church. I have been 
told by men of unquestionable piety, that the only 
means they have to maintain their belief even in 
God, is never to suffer themselves to inquire into 
the grounds of that belief. The moment they ask 
for proofs, they say, they begin to doubt. 

Our churches are but partially filled, and the 
majority of those who attend them complain that 
they are not fed. Our clergy are industrious, and 
in most cases do all that men can do, and yet not 
many mighty works do they, because of the peo- 
ple's unbelief. Everywhere we hear complaint. 
Even amongst the clergy themselves doubt finds 
its way. Learned professors proclaim publicly 
and emphatically, even while denouncing infidel- 
ity, that we can have no certainty, that our evi- 
dence of Christianity is at best but a high degree 
of probability. Surely, then, it is time to turn 
Christianity over and see if it have not a side which 
we have not hitherto observed. Perhaps when we 



262 CHARLES ELWOOD. 

come to see it on another side, in a new light 
it will appear unto us more beautiful and have 
greater power to attract our love and reverence. 

The views here presented have won the love 
and reverence of one man who was once as obsti- 
nate an unbeliever as can be found. I know not 
why they should not have the same effect on others. 

More I would say, but I have lingered too long 
already. If any have been interested in the sev- 
eral personages I have introduced, as having been 
in some way or other connected with my spiritual 
conflicts, and who would wish to know their ulti- 
mate fate, I must reply by asking where, in the 
case of any one of us, are those who started with 
us in life, and whose young hearts responded 
warmly to our own ? Where are the friends and 
acquaintances we formed, and whose course for 
a while run parallel with our own ? There were 
many of them, but where are they now ? One 
by one they have dropped away, and we have 
plodded on, in our turn to drop aside, and be 
passed by the new throngs pressing onward to an 
unknown goal. 

"And Elizabeth, will you tell us nothing of 
her ?." Pardon me. I have planted wild flowers 
on her grave, and watered them with my tears. 



THE END. 









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